My Year With Proust - Day 33

" . . . my grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge of Tansonville, said: "You are fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink one; isn't it pretty?

   And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose flowers were pink, and lovelier even than the white.  It, too, was in holiday attire, for one of those days which are the only true holidays, the holy days of religion, because they are not appointed by any capricious accident, as secular holidays are appointed, upon days which are not specially ordained for such observances, which have nothing about them that is essentially festal - but it was attired when more richly than the rest, for the flowers which clung to its branches, one above another, so thickly as to leave no part of the tree undecorated, like the tassels wreathed about the crook of a rococo shepherdess, were every one of them 'in colour', and consequently of a superior quality, by the aesthetic standards of Combray, to the 'plain', if one was to judge by the scale of prices at the 'stores' in the Square, or at Camus's, where the most expensive biscuits were those whose sugar was pink.  And for my own part I set a higher value on cream cheese when it was pink, when I had been allowed to tinge it with crushed strawberries.  And these flowers had chosen precisely the colour of some edible and delicious thing, or of some exquisite addition to one's costume for a great festival, which colours, inasmuch as they make plain the reason for their superiority, are those who beauty is most evident to the eyes of children, and for that reason must always seem more vivid and more natural than any other tints, even after the child's mind was realized that they offer no gratification to the appetite, and have not been selected by the dressmaker. And, indeed, I had felt at once, as I had felt before the white blossom, but now still more marvelling, that it was in no artificial manner, by no device of human construction, that the festal intention of these flowers was revealed, but that it was Nature herself who had spontaneously expressed it (with the simplicity of a woman from a village shop, labouring at the decoration of a street altar for some procession) by burying the bush in these little rosettes, almost too ravishing in colour, this rustic 'pompadour'. High up on the branches, like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets of paper lace, whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on the greater festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler in colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of pink marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly than the full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the hawthorn-tree, which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could bud and blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking its place in the hedge, but as different from the rest as a young girl in holiday attire among a crowd of dowdy women in everyday clothes, who are staying at home, equipped and ready for the 'Month of May', of which it seemed already to form a part, it shone and smiled in its cool, rosy garments, a Catholic bush indeed, and altogether delightful."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 147-148

I love this section, which I guess you could tell by the ungodly amount I included and also how I drew it out over several posts.  To be fair, we're not done yet, because we're getting ready to read Proust's account of seeing Gilberte for the first time, so chopping this all up, albeit clumsily, seemed like the best approach.

As I was reading I was marveling in the beauty of Proust's prose, and his powers of analysis and perception and description. Sadly, we don't normally reach such, well, Proustian heights.  The juxtaposition of Proust's description of the hawthorns, especially the pink hawthorns, with his grandfather's description of them as "pretty" was jarring, but also appropriate. There is a reason why some religious folks write, when forced to do so, the divine as g_d.  The word is too small and petty for something so ineffable.  Similarly, his grandfather's use of the word "pretty" seemed almost like an insult as compared to his grandson's effusive praise.  However, I guess it's all subjective; maybe through his grandfather's eyes (and sensibilities) the word "pretty" was more aesthetically and emotionally complete than Proust's own words.

There is so much more to say, which I'm finding with all of these passages.

I've done a quick perusal and apparently you can grow hawthorns in Vermont, which means that come spring I may have to plant my Proust-inspired Budding Grove in the side yard.

My Year With Proust - Day 32

   "And then I returned to my hawthorns, and stood before them as one stands before those masterpieces of painting which, one imagines, one will be better able to 'take in' when one has looked away, for a moment, at something else; but in vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as to have nothing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which they aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling and failing to free itself, to float across and become one with the flowers.  They themselves offered me no enlightenment, and I could not call upon any other flowers to satisfy this mysterious longing.  And then, inspiring me with that rapture which we feel on seeing a work by our favourite painter quite different from any of those that we already know, or, better still, when someone has taken us and set us down in front of a picture of which we have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch, or when a piece of music which we have heard played over on the piano busts out again in our ears with all the splendour and fullness of an orchestra, my grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge of Tansonville, said: 'You are fond of hawthorns; just look at this pink one; isn't it pretty?'"

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 147

OK, so I'll hold off delivering one of my favorite passages so far, in an act that almost qualifies as anticipatory but delayed sexual gratification.  While I love the sense of anticipation that Proust creates in this paragraph, I'm also intrigued by our inability to "force" enlightenment.  Proust, after consciously drawing his attention aside, then tries to revisit the hawthorns, almost expecting them to deliver, on demand, on their promise of beauty.  The Buddhists have that term satori or "sudden enlightenment", where total realization of the ultimate reality comes unawares, and maybe after years of unsuccessful study and meditation.  Essentially, it might mean that you can't consciously create enlightenment, whether it is spiritual or one associated only with beauty (if there is a difference, obviously), but you can only put yourself in the position to receive enlightenment.  Like an orgasm, another example of transcendence (there is a reason the French refer to it as the petit mort), you can't force it, and forcing it only makes it more difficult to attain. And then his grandfather makes a suggestion, almost acting like an old man in a call to adventure in Campbell's monomyth, and then Proust experiences transcendent beauty.

Andy in Hell

Or at least in Hell, Michigan. My excellent friend Andy, now, sadly, a resident of Michigan, sent along this picture, while referencing my attempt, along with my son, to track down Satans Kingdom, Vermont last summer.  Apparently he was more successful than we were.

We do miss this boy.  He'll probably end up winning awards in Hell as well.

My Year With Proust - Day 31

   "For there were, in the environs of Combray, two 'ways' which we used to take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually leave the house by a different door, according to the way we had chosen: the way towards Meseglise-la-Vineuse, which we called also 'Swann's way', because, to get there, one had to pass along the boundary of M. Swann's estate, and the 'Guermantes way'.  Of Meseglise-la-Vineuse, to tell the truth, I never knew anything more than the way there, and the strange people who would come over on Sundays to take the air in Combray, people whom, this time, neither my aunt nor any of us would 'know at all', and whom we would therefore assume to be 'people who must have come over from Meseglise.' As for Guermantes, I was to know it well enough one day, but that day had still to come; and during the whole of my boyhood, if Meseglise was to me something as inaccessible as the horizon, which remained hidden from sight, however far one went, by the folds of a country which no longer bore the least resemblance to the country round Combray; Guermantes, on the other hand, meant no more than the ultimate goal, ideal rather than real, of the 'Guermantes way', a sort of abstract geographical term like the North Pole or the Equator.  And so to 'take the Guermantes way' in order to get to Meseglise, or vice versa, would have seemed to me as nonsensical a proceeding as to turn to the east in order to reach the west.  Since my father used always to speak of the 'Meseglise way' as comprising the finest view of a plain that he knew anywhere, and of the 'Guermantes way' as typical of river scenery, I had invested each of them, by conceiving them in this way as two distinct entities, with that cohesion, that unity which belongs only to the figments of the mind; the smallest detail of either of them appeared to me as a precious thing, which exhibited the special excellence of the whole, while, immediately beside them, in the first stages of our walk, before we had reached the sacred soil of one or the other, the purely material roads, at definite points on which they were set down as the ideal view over a place and the ideal scenery of a river, were no more worth the trouble of looking at them than, to a keen playgoer and lover of dramatic art, are the little streets which may happen to run past the walls of a theatre.  But, above all, I set between them far more distinct than the mere distance in miles and yards and inches which separated one from the other, the distance that there was between the two parts of my brain in which I used to think of them, one of those distance of the mind which time serves only to lengthen, keeping them for ever upon different planes. And this distinction was rendered still more absolute because the habit we had of never going both ways on the same day, or in the course of the same walk, but the 'Meseglise way' one time and the 'Guermantes way' another, shut them up, so to speak, far apart and unaware of each other's existence, in the sealed vessels - between which there could be no communication - of separate afternoons."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 141-142

Up to this point I've been trying to write commentary that followed the chronological flow of the novel, although I don't particularly know why - especially with a novel that relies so much upon memory and past reflection.  Essentially, I was trying to not hop back several pages, although, again, I don't know why/  I'm mentioning simply because in this case I am hopping back a few pages to Proust's discussion of the difference between the 'Meseglise way' (Swann's way) and the 'Guermantes way'.  I'm doing this because, well, I should have included it earlier, first off.  Why?  Partially because it is important because both are mentioned repeatedly and obviously give their names to different volumes, so it is, at the least, necessary information.

More importantly, there is the clear metaphor of different paths that Proust, or for that matter all of us, take during our lives.  And sometimes these paths seem as polar opposites as the Meseglise way and the Guermantes way seemed to the young Proust.  For example, for me I have the Hoosier way and the International way, and reaching one from the other seems as logical as "to turn to the east in order to reach the west." I certainly have a tortured relationship with my Indiana roots, and, before deactivating Facebook, I had defriended several old high school acquaintances who had tracked me down and sent unexpected friend requests because of their archly conservative and at times blatantly racist and Islamophobic screeds.  So, to reach the International way from the Hoosier way almost seems to defy logic.  And, in turn, travelling on the Hoosier way after walking the International way is essentially impossible, as much as my brother Eric would love me to move to Indianapolis (although I would love to see him and his family more).  That said, I'm sure these two disparate ways communicate and influence each other inside my addled brain and tattered soul, in much the same ways that the Aztecs and Incas indirectly influenced each other even though they didn't know that the other existed. Maybe when I'm in Sana'a or Kasgar or Zanzibar I'm still that kid from Rising Sun who never completely left the Hoosier way, but also vice versa.

My Year With Proust - Day 30

   "But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns, to breathe in, to marshal before my mind (which knew not what to make of it), to lose in order to rediscover their invisible and unchanging odour, to absorb myself in the rhythm which disposed their flowers here and there with the lightheartedness of youth, and at intervals as unexpected as certain intervals of music; they offered me an indefinite continuation of the same charm, in an inexhaustible profusion, but without letting me delve into it any more deeply, like those melodies which one can play over a hundred times in succession without coming any nearer to their secret.  I turned away from them for a moment so as to be able to return to them with return strength. My eyes followed up the slope which, outside the hedge, rose steeply to the fields, a poppy that had strayed and been lost by its fellows, or a few cornflowers that had fallen hazily behind, and decorated the ground here and there with their flowers like the borders of which appears triumphant in the panel itself; infrequent still, spaced apart as the scattered houses which warn us that we are approaching a village, they betokened to me the vast expanse of waving corn beneath the fleecy clouds, and the sight of a single poppy hoisting upon its slender rigging and holding against the breeze its scarlet ensign, over the buoy of rich black earth from which it sprang, made my heart beat as does a wayfarer's when he perceives, upon some low-lying ground, an old and broken boat which is being caulked and made sea-worthy, and cries out, although he has not yet caught sight of it, 'The Sea!'"

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 146

In earlier posts I discussed passages which suggested the potential for greatness to come.  This is one of those passages where that greatness, that almost sublime beauty, is delivered as promised. I think the line, "But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns" may have carved itself onto my tombstone.  For years I've proposed that I would feature the passage from T.S. Eliot:

     Between the desire and the spasm
     Between the potency and the existence
     Between the essence and the descent
     Falls the shadow

And while I still love those lines, I don't know if they match the evocative power of Proust's words. Essentially, I think Eliot contains a world whereas Proust suggests a universe.

But why do I like it so much?  I do think we are drawn to beauty, and that it is almost impossible to linger before it.  The ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius warned that only the heart (mind) could be trusted because all the sense are drawn almost magnetically toward beauty.  And that's OK, because that is, I would argue, human nature at its best.  Rumi reminds us to "judge a moth by its candle." That is, judge a person or a society by what it finds beautiful.  It is arguably folly to resist it.

Why does the suggestion of something more profound stay with us in a way that the reality of something just as marvelous doesn't?  Maybe the promise is destined to always be greater than the reality, just as the edge of love is inevitably more powerful than love itself. We read Othello is one of our first year classes, as we will often discuss that our fascination with Iago is based on him telling us that "we know what we know" and never saying more.  If we would have followed it with a detailed Powerpoint and action plan we would have stopped reading the play years ago. Proust writes that the hawthorns "an inexhaustible profusion, but without letting me delve into it any more deeply, lie those melodies which one can play over a hundred times in succession without coming any nearer to their secret." I've talked elsewhere about my love of Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden, a book that no one but my great friend Sarah Cohen and I seem to appreciate. I'm sure I've read the novel at least four times, and I cry at certain points - well, actually, much like David Copperfield and It's a Wonderful Life, it seems the number of crying points keeps expanding - but I don't know if I'll ever truly understand it.  I feel that in Dr. Gustav Uyterhoeven's adventures there is some transcendent truth which is just beyond my ability to grasp, and that keeps me coming back, not simply to figure out that evasive truth, but rather to revel in that shadow world.  And maybe it's why I've always liked Neil Young so much; his music is more evocative than definitive.  In much the same way there's a lot of R.E.M. I love, including my favorite of theirs Country Feedback (I'll include a link of a performance where they played the song with Young at one of his performances to fund his Bridge school - nerd alert, it doesn't get any better than this).

Finally, I love that he had to look away from them to regain his strength before tackling them again. For some reason it reminds me of the final scene from American Beauty (maybe because I showed it to my students in Heroines & Heroes this morning) where Lester says that the beauty is sometimes too much and he has to relax and let it wash over him.

OK, I guess that wasn't final after all.  The next section is even more beautiful.

My Year With Proust - Day 29

   "We stopped for a moment by the fence.  Lilac-time was nearly over; some of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry and scentless.  My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had altered since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann on the day of his wife's death; and he seized the opportunity to tell us, once again, the story of that walk.

   In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in the fall glare of the sun towards the house.  But to our right the park stretched away into the distance, on level ground.  Overshadowed by the tall trees which stood close around it, an 'ornamental war' had been constructed by Swann's parents; but, even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own especial sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon the world of man's hands.  And so it was that, at the foot of the path which led down to this artificial lake, there might be seen, in its two tiers woven of trailing forget-me-nots below and of periwinkle above, the natural, delicate, blue garland which binds the luminous, shadowed brows of water-nymphs; while the iris, its swords sweeping every way in regal profusion, stretched out over agrimony and water-growing king-cups the lilied sceptres, tattered glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom of the lake."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 143-144

I will have more to say about this, especially in relation to my own conflicted view of nature, but mainly I just think this is a wonderful passage - and it sets up an even more beautiful section.

My Year With Proust - Day 28

  "'No,' he returned, explaining by his words the tone in which they were uttered.  'No, I do not know them; I have never wished to know them; I have always made a point of preserving complete independence; at heart, as you know, I am a bit of a Radical.  People are always coming to me about it, telling me I am mistaken in not going to Guermantes, that I make myself seem ill-bred, uncivilized, an old beat.  But that's not the sort of reputation that can frighten me; it's too true!  In my heart of hearts, I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, books - two or three pictures - rather more, perhaps, and the light of the moon when the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my nostrils the scent of gardens whose flowers my old eyes are not sharp enough, now, to distinguish.'"

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 134-135

This is a post which I know will be revisited several times and will doubtless end up being quite lengthy.  At first blush it reminds me of Manhattan, one of my favorite movies, and the scene at the end where the Woody Allen character is reflecting on what makes life worth living. So, if I were Allen lying back on the couch what images would be rushing into my head? I'll leave aside the equivalent versions of Tracy's face, at least for the time being.  I'll also set aside books in this post, although I completely agree on Flaubert's Sentimental Education, mainly because I started discussing books on a related post a couple weeks ago (which I need to get back to, come to think of it).

Proust writes, "In my heart of hearts, I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, books - two or three pictures - rather more, perhaps, and the light of the moon when the fresh breeze of youth (such as yours) wafts to my nostrils the scent of gardens whose flowers my old eyes are not sharp enough now, to distinguish." This will definitely be evolutionary.

I would have to include Gauguin's The Spirit of Death Watches, which, as every one of my students can attest, is not only my favorite painting of all time but also "the greatest painting in the world."

Now, why would it make this list? First off, Gauguin is my favorite painter, so it would make perfect sense that my favorite painting would be one of his.  I just think it's beautiful, and, as the critics like to say, fully realized.  Even more, however, I simply love the metaphor.  Life is sweet and supple and beautiful, but it is transient; death is always there, although not terrifying or judgmental or apocalyptic, just present.  So plan accordingly. I tend to slide a copy of this painting in as my computer wallpaper when I'm working on a project, as the not to subtle reminder to keep working.  More importantly, it is a reminder of what is important in life (and life is always more important than work).

My Year With Proust - Day 27

   "I could hear what M. Legrandin was saying; like everything that he said, it sounded attractive; but I was disturbed by the memory of a lady whom I had seen recently for the first time; and thinking, now that I knew that Legrandin was on friendly terms with several of the local aristocracy that perhaps she also was among his acquaintance, I summoned up all my courage and said to him: 'Tell me, sir, do you, by any chance, know the lady - the ladies of Guermantes?' and I felt glad because, in pronouncing the name, I had secured a sort of power over it, by the mere act of drawing it up out of my dreams and giving it an objective existence in the world of spoken things."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 133-134

Existence.

When I'm trying to wind up my students in COR 110, which is essentially every day, I will try and get them to question the very nature of reality and existence; essentially, the reality and existence of reality and existence.  Now, being eighteen they love that discussion, just as they also hate it because to them it's nothing more than a rationale to not do the reading.

My Year With Proust - Day 26

   "I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house, by moonlight.  'There is a charming quality, is there not,' he said to me, 'in this silence, for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist, whom you will read in time to come, claims that there is no remedy but silence and shadow.  And see you this, my boy, there comes in all lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.'"

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 133

There definitely comes a time when we find ourselves retreating from the busy working and shared and glaring world into the world of silence and shadow.  You all transition into the world completely at the end, but we begin the slow transition much earlier; certainly involuntarily because of disease and decay, but more importantly I think we begin to make that transition voluntarily as we move to something far more beautiful and more important.  I'm thinking of Sherwood Anderson's story "Death" from Winesburg, Ohio where George Willard's dying mother is identifying Death as her lover.  I'd like to say that it is a fit metaphor, but it's probably much more than that.  Maybe the boundary between life and death is more porous than we realize, and thus we're drawn toward it almost through osmosis.  So, in this particular case that world of silence and shadow is less the dying of the light and more than inevitable stage where we've passed into the penumbral territory of death. And not only is it inevitable, but isn't also desirable (going back to Death as a lover, and in fact the Lover).

My Year With Proust - Day 25

"It was like every attitude or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not been the victims of a hallucination; with the result that such attitudes, and these alone are of importance in indicating character, are the most apt to leave us in perplexity."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 133

Here is another instance where the young Proust and his family are trying to figure out the actions of the odd Legrandin.  I'll have to come back to this because I'd like to include one of my favorite passages from Marcus Aurelius where he walks you through the approach that you should take every time you meet someone; classic MA where you intellectually dissect the other person, including their reasons for doing whatever they're doing.

Ah, yes, section 11 from Book Three of the Meditations:

"11. To these maxims add yet another.  When an object presents itself to your perception, make a mental definition or at least an outline of it, so as to discern its essential character, to pierce beyond its separate attributes to a distinct view of the naked whole, and to identify for yourself both the object itself and the elements of which it is composed, and into which it will again be resolved.  Nothing so enlarges the mind as this ability to examine methodically and accurately every one of life's experiences, with an eye to determining its classification, the ends it serves, its worth to the universe, and its worth to men as the members of that supreme City in which all other cities are as households.  Take, for example, the thing which is producing its impressions upon me at this moment.  What is it?  Whereof is it composed? How long is it designed to last?  What moral response does it ask of me; gentleness, fortitude, candour, good faith, sincerity, self-reliance, or some other quality?  In every instance learn to say, This comes from God; or, This is one of Fate's dispensations, a strand in the complex web, a conjunction of fortuities; or again, This is the work of a man who is of the same stock and breed and brotherhood as I am, but is ignorant of what Nature requires of him.  I myself, however, can plead no such ignorance, and therefore in accordance with Nature's law of brotherhood I am to deal amiably and fairly with him - though at the same time, if there be no question of good or evil involved, I must aim my shafts at the proper merits of the case."

The Last Night at Pinkie Masters

Our recent trip to Savannah gave me the chance to visit, and maybe for the last time, the greatest dive bar of all time: Pinkie Masters.  Brenda and I first discovered Pinkie Masters years ago, and then introduced our great friend Dave Kelley to it (or maybe it's the other way around, I'm not certain any more).  Anyway, it is an amazing dive bar, and I dragooned my son and my sister Beth's friend Alex into paying it a visit.  We managed to show up on the last night before they were going to move to a more central location downtown.  I'm at the point in my life when I talk about things like "my last car" or "my last dog" or the "last time I go to Jordan."  Maybe this is my last dive bar, and, if that's the case, what a dive bar.  It's a little sad that they are moving, although maybe they'll beat the odds and maintain their odd charm.  Of course, I'm not the one who had to deal with those terrible benches in the booths that doubtless send countless customers crashing to the floor every year.  I guess it relates to my general Proustian discussion this year because we always want to maintain certain memories in amber, even if that limits someone else's life. Of course, I shouldn't romanticize it to much.  I was up front at the bar grabbing three Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boys, and reflecting on Frank from Blue Velvet, when this guy in front of me says, "I wish there were some Muslims here tonight so I could cut off their heads." Despite my legendary temper I've never hit anyone in my entire life.  However, at that moment I was so tempted to haul off and cold cock him, and then drop the mike and walk out.  Now, that would have been a legendary way to close down the bar (although I suspect that would just be a random Tuesday at Pinkie Masters).

What I wouldn't give for that street sign.  They used to have an autographed picture of George Wallace on the college boxing team at the University of Alabama; I'm sure that was nicked years ago.

My sister Beth's friend Alex and my son Gary.  I was so happy to introduce Gary to Pinkie Masters. Nothing like PBR tall boys and good friends.

And, truthfully, what could be better than a bar with an autographed picture of Huntz Hall.  I can so clearly remember watching Bowery Boys movies while growing up, which were "moider."

Yes, the genuine inappropriateness of the true dive bar.

The crowd scene on the last night, including the painting of the nude woman which has been hanging on for who knows how many years.

And this picture says it all.  Somehow I feel that it will sadly not be the same bar when it's located over next to the tourist hub, although doubtless they'll sell a lot more t-shirts (and, by the way, I do wear an XL if you're considering my Christmas gift).

My Year With Proust - Day 24

"Near the church we met Legrandin, coming towards us with the same lady, whom he was escorting to her carriage.  He brushed past us, and did not interrupt what he was saying to her, but gave us, out of the corner of his blue eye, a little sign, which began and ended, so to speak, inside his eyelids, and as it did not involve the least movement of his facial muscles, managed to pass quite unperceived by the lady; but, striving to compensate by the intensity of his feelings for the somewhat restricted field in which they had to find expression, he made that blue chink, which was set apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of cordiality, which went far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the border-line or roguery; he subtilized the refinements of good-fellowship into a wink of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret understanding, all the mysteries of complicity in a plot, and finally exalted his assurance of friendship to the level of protestations of affection, even of a declaration of love, lighting up for us, and for us alone, with a secret and languid flame invisible to the great lady upon his other side, an enamoured pupil in a countenance of ice."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 132

Some of the best small moments from Proust so far have been associated with Legrandin, who I suppose I should devote some time researching.  I like this section for a couple reasons, not the least of which is the use of the word "subtilized" which I definitely have to add to my rotation in an effort to bolster my shockingly limited vocabulary.  Mainly, I love his description of the energy, usually so clumsily disguised, when people are falling in love, even if only one of them is actually falling.  It's one of those situations where you're trying to do your best Cary Grant impersonation and instead everyone in the room knows that you've already lost control of your present and your future, which also means you've lost control of your past.

My Year With Proust - Day 23

"Legrandin's face showed an extraordinary zeal and animation; he made a profound bow, with a subsidiary backward movement which brought his spine sharply up into a position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme de Cambremer.  This rapid recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the wind of an assiduity, an obsequiousness of the basest sort, awoke my mind suddenly to the possibility of a Legrandin altegether different from the one whom we knew."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 131

I don't necessarily know why I find this little snippet so interesting.  Legrandin is a fairly minor character who walks through a few scenes, but who nevertheless seems to have something odd or at least noticeable to say or do.  In this particular case Proust appears to notice that another person is actually, in fact, a person, and has a body   All of us, even the most sensitive, is at heart solipsistic in that we assume that all the people in our lives exist only in the most tangential fashion, mainly as foils in the passion play that constitutes our life.  And when we don't need them they disrobe and wait quietly in the green room, or, like the angels in Wings of Desire, in the stacks of the library, until they are called back on stage.  Or maybe they don't exist at all, and are only created out of nothing by our thoughts (as least this is what I assure my students when I'm in the mood to rile them up).  Of course,it works both ways, as any professor will tell you who has experienced the sense of excitement/dread that a student exhibits when they run into them doing something as mundane as buying groceries at Shaw's on the weekend.  I think they assume that we, like Chinese hungry ghosts that can't get over the door stop, bounce endlessly around our classrooms.  However, as St. Augustine reminds us, "In piss and shit we are born." Essentially, that we do live in this messy, although sweet, old world.  Freeland in Portraits & Persons, the bane of my freshmen's existence, discusses the different aspects of the self: moral, relational, reflective and, yes, physical; we do live in this body, beset as it is by pain and decay and desire.

The Reports of My Demise

Just a silly picture of me taken at the Twain Museum. I liked the museum quite a bit and the tour of the house was great.  My favorite part, perversely, was the admission by the tour guide that while Twain thought that he and Dickens were great literary rivals, apparently Dickens didn't know that they were.  And, well, come on, Dickens was twice the writer that Twain was (said the unrepentant Dickens fan). That said, the trip really made me want to reread Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and especially Life on the Mississippi. This picture reminds me of the wonderful Marvin Cole, who was the president of DeKalb (eventually to become Georgia Perimeter) College when I began my teaching career.  He was that remarkably rare individual: a selfless administrator who primarily valued teaching and the life of the mind.  And he really liked me.  When he retired several of us got together and gave him a first edition of Life on the Mississippi.

For some reason this was a very popular picture on Facebook, which may help to explain why I'm no longer on FB.

My Year With Proust - Day 22

   "But the vote of the family council was unanimous, that my father had imagined the whole thing, or that Legrandin, at the moment in question, had been preoccupied in thinking about something else.  Anyhow, my father's fears were dissipated no later than the following evening.  As we returned from a long walk we saw, near the Pont-Vieux, Legrandin himself, who, on account of the holidays, was spending a few days more in Combrary.  he came up to us with out-stretched hands: 'Do you know, master book-lover,' he asked me, 'this line of Paul Desjardins?'

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this?  Perhaps you have never read Paul Desjardins.  Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he is converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have the most charming water-color touch - 

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by looking up to the sky.'

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 126

Part of me wants to take this advice as watered-down Marcus Aurelius, although I suppose I take most things as watered-down Marcus Aurelius.  Of course, my philosopher friends Kite and Capone would mock Marcus Aurelius as watered-down Epictetus.

My Year With Proust - Day 21

"This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which ones thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when, the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the wall, which has with some difficulty brought itself to subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 121

I knew when I launched this endeavor that at times it would be too personal and too painful, essentially too close, and this is definitely going to be one of those times. As painful as a breakup is, I would argue that the alternative, where you are in a somnambulistic state in an atrophying relationship, is probably worse. In the last years of my marriage I think I was in a place where I didn't care at all, and, again, that's not completely a condemnation of my wife, because, in the end, I allowed myself to reach that point.  And, truthfully, I could have been the chief culprit in getting there.  I think I have a real tendency to fade into the background, and then also, classically, wonder why no one seems to notice that I'm there.  Part of it, I suspect, relates to being raised to be that guy, the one doesn't need help, who is always there for everyone else; the one who would never admit to his own needs because that's a sign of weakness.  Or maybe I don't ever want to actually be in a relationship, although that's an unpleasant thought.  I've always favored that line from Scipio Africanus, "I'm never less lonely than when I am by myself." But that's the creation of a mythology in its own right - where we're all the character from Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Mist.    If I learned anything from the sad last years of my marriage and the horrible period of the separation and divorce is that I really do want and need someone.  I guess I never truly understood what loneliness was until that period in my life.  Of course, to reach that point where I understood what I really needed I also had to cause a lot of pain, and insure a lot of loneliness, for my ex-wife, who I've always loved and who, in a lot of ways, was my best friend.  The last several years of my marriage was marked by an almost perverse death watch, where I was dreadfully unhappy but also afraid to hurt my wife, where she in turn could justify me not leaving because she had freakishly high cholesterol and a family history of dying early.  It's almost as if we weren't changing anything because we were just waiting for her inevitable decline, and that's just so morbid and weird, but relationships tend to have their own internal logic (even if its ridiculously illogical).  So why didn't we fight, if we did love each other (which we did)?  Maybe we just both hated conflict so much that we couldn't face the emotional pain of essentially razing to the ground and rebuilding the edifice of our relationship after years of neglect.  Or maybe you can really love another person and somehow oddly not care if the relationship ends.  Certainly even after we separated neither of us made much of an effort to fix anything, and I was so destroyed by guilt that I would have come home for just about any half-hope.  Maybe we were just too proud, and were waiting for the other one to have the epiphany of their own failings and take responsibility for everything.  Of course, I think of every breakup I've ever had and none of them really make much sense.  Now, the big question, which I'll need to explore in more detail - and which will require more painful self-analysis - is whether or not now that I live in the tedium of the bourgeoisie of South Burlington that all of this will repeat itself.

My students really love this painting, which we study in Concepts of the Self, mainly  because, I suspect, it perfectly reflects that classic college age period of self-absorption.  As I always point out to my students, they're remarkably self-absorbed, although not particularly self-reflective.  Of course, what does it say about me when I'm still playing the same game in my 50s?

The Boy at Tim Horton's

Recently I ran my son up to Montreal to fly back to Cincinnati to visit his mother.  It's much less expensive to fly out of Montreal, normally, than it is to fly out of Burlington - plus, you get to cross the border.  And, most importantly, you get to stop at Tim Horton's.  I was able to introduce my son to Tim Horton's.  His only problem was the oddly structured bathroom, where the toilet was only about three inches from the wall.  We stopped at the same Tim Horton's on the way up and the way back, which my son didn't realize - which led him to philosophize about the strange plumbing regulations in Canada.

The first of what will doubtless be many trips across the border to Tim Horton's.  He's now completely sold on TimBits.

My Year With Proust - Day 20

   "While I was reading in the garden, a thing my great-aunt would never have understood my doing save on a Sunday, that being the day on which it was unlawful to indulge in any serious occupation, and on which she herself would lay aside her sewing (on a week-day she would have said, 'How you can go on amusing yourself with a book; it isn't Sunday, you know!' putting into the word 'amusing' an implication of childishness and waste of time)."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p 105

I began this process to try, among other goals, obviously, to shake some memories loose.  This short passage definitely achieved that goal, as two different and very distinct memories came to mind.

The first stretches back almost thirty years.  Brenda, a very young Gary and I were living with my parents.  We had to move in for a year late in my graduate career, after I had run out of funding at UC and before I pulled together a livable deal at Franklin College (where I worked while I finished my dissertation).  Anyway, I was on the computer (and it's funny to think what constituted a computer then) working on a chapter when my mom popped around the corner and asked me if I would run to the store for her.  While I have a million flaws, I normally don't ever squawk about being asked to run errands.  However, I was at a point where I actually had developed some momentum in my writing and was getting some serious work done, so I asked if she could ask Eric or Beth (my youngest siblings, who were both at home at the time) if they could go instead.  She responded that they were watching TV.  The point was that they were doing something that she could understand, and thus was serious, and so it would constitute an inconsiderate interruption to ask them to go.  Whereas I was doing something so alien to her understanding that it could not have been serious, and so it was not an interruption.

Secondly, I remember riding on the shuttle from central Vermont to Burlington one time, happily buried in a volume of Dickens.  One of the other commuters asked what I was reading, and I told her Bleak House or David Cooperfield or whatever tome I was plowing through at that moment.  She said, "Oh, that's one of the classics, isn't it?"  And it wasn't a good "oh".  It wasn't an "oh" of "wow, that's what I should be doing right now," but rather an "oh" of "I'm so sorry, how did this happen?"  It's actually one of the inspirations for my (never to be finished) book on the epics.  People all too often take that viewpoint when thinking about "classic" literature, and I'm hoping that the book helps people to understand that these works are are actually much more accessible than people think - and that they contain a world of enlightenment and joy - and so you should tackle them.  On a related note, folks on the bus would interrupt me all the time while I was reading, I guess thinking that they were doing me a favor by breaking up that hateful chore, reading.

One final thought: I've had students encourage me to read graphic novels because they're "a quicker way to get the information" than more standard novels.  For a person who loves to read, it's very sad to meet so many people who never give themselves that gift.

My Year With Proust - Day 19

"Once we believe that a fellow-creature has a share in some unknown existence to which that creature's love for ourselves can win us admission, that is, of all the preliminary conditions which Love exacts, the one to which he attaches most importance, the one which makes him generous or indifferent as to the rest.  Even those women who pretend that they judge a man by his exterior only, see in that exterior an emanation from some special way of life.  And that is why they fall in love with a soldier or a fireman, whose uniform makes them less particular about his face; they kiss and believe that beneath the crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from the rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender; and so it is that a young king or a crown prince may travel in foreign countries and make the most gratifying conquests, and yet lack entirely that regular and classic profile which would be indispensable, I dare say, in an outside-broker."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 105

Proust proposes that women "kiss and believe that beneath the crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from the rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender."  Certainly both sexes are guilty of falling for a mask, an imagined self.  As the great Canadian philosopher reminds us in Ambulance Blues, "you're only real with your make-up on." Now, are women more guilty of this than men?  And, if so, is this one of those societally enforced phenomena from watching too many Walt Disney movies? The argument would be that when women push to get "inside" they discover that the real person is not actually the mask, when the mask is all that they really wanted in the first place.

Reflections

There's nothing profound about this particular post.  Mainly, I just like this picture. I was heading out for a walk when I was visiting my sister down in Savannah, and was turning onto Lincoln Street.  I snapped a quick picture which I posted on Facebook with the line, "Jeffrey, you're not going down by Lincoln, are you?" Sadly, no one picked up on the painfully obscure Blue Velvet reference.  I then noticed that, if you focused in and did some cropping, that I was reflected in a Christmas ornament on a tree in a neighbor's front yard.  It seemed like a very fitting image and metaphor for this year's quest. When you take time to stop and look closely there are all sorts of things to see, including little bits of yourself everywhere.

One of my most beloved ex-student, Pat Orr, did jump in and ask,after I posted the picture on Facebook, whether it was an homage to Neil Young and one of his most iconic album images.  Nicely spotted.  Obviously, Pat had great teachers.

My Year With Proust - Day 18

"And so, if I always imagined the woman I loved as in a setting of whatever places I most longed, at the time, to visit; if in my secret longings it was she who attracted me to them, who opened to me the gate of an unknown world, that was not by the mere hazard of a simple association of thoughts; no, it was because my dreams of travel and of love were only moments - which I isolate artificially to-day as though I were cutting sections, at different heights, in a jet of water, rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or motion - were only drops in a single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of all the forces of my life."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 90

Once again, Proust is focused in like a laser on an essential truth. Abu Dhabi and Beirut and Dubrovnik and Salalah and London and Zanzibar. Burlington and Vienna and Villach and Lucca and Moscow and Toronto.  Amman and Melbourne.  Johannesburg.  Atlanta and Omaha and Barcelona. Chicago. Amman and Minneapolis. Franklin and Cincinnati and Atlanta and Savannah. I remember a candidate for a position once, as part of his interview, handing out words that he had clipped from poems and we, the audience, were supposed to construct them and thus the poem; making sense of the puzzle.  I can create puzzle pieces relating to some of my favorite places, which I associate with women that I have been fortunate enough to have loved, been loved by, and sometimes even by some divine accident been in love with at the same time  And, as I've been brooding over in previous posts, I don't know if I can separate the places from the emotions.  As Proust opines, "my dreams of travel and of love were only moments - which I isolate artificially to-day as though I were cutting sections, at different heights, in a jet of water, rainbow-flashing but seemingly without flow or motion - were only drops in a single, undeviating, irresistible outrush of all the forces of my life."  If Proust is right then the very attempt is "artificial.," cutting sections from flowing water.

My Year With Proust - Day 17

"We try to discover in things, endeared to us on that account, the spiritual glamour which we ourselves have cast upon them; we are disillusioned, and learn that they are in themselves barren and devoid of the charm which they owed, in our minds, to the association of certain ideas; sometimes we mobilize all our spiritual forces in a glittery array so as to influence and subjugate other human beings who, as we very well know, are situated outside ourselves, where we can never reach them."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 90

As I discussed lat time, I have very mixed emotions about the upcoming trip to Zanzibar, and on one level am afraid that it will end up being "barren and devoid of . . . charm."  Yes, Zanzibar is beautiful, and the warm and enveloping ocean breezes coming in off the Indian Ocean will be especially welcome as we leave behind the bitter dregs of the end of another Vermont winter.  Also, there is a vibe, a feel, that comes with Zanzibar, which is so different than emotionally cold and judgmental Vermont. Still, Zanzibar, as all things, is shaped by an "association of certain ideas."  Will it be the same place I left?  It was a place and a time where, for the first time after dragging my heels for months, began to believe that there was the possibility of another world, and one where I could be really happy. In the end those dreams, like footprints washed away by waves, disappeared.  So, if it is going to be a different place, then maybe the key is for me to arrive as a different person. I think it was Heraclitus who proposed that you can never step in the same stream twice because every second brings change, the only constant, to the stream (and the world). Even if I am, by definition, a different person than the one who visited Zanzibar for the first time three years ago, I also need to very consciously attempt to be a different person.  I need to rediscover Zanzibar - and the world - as an entirely new person.

There is so much more in this brief little section.  The line, "sometimes we mobilize all our spiritual forces in a glittery array so as to influence and subjugate other human beings who, as we very well know, are situated outside ourselves, where we can never reach them." I'm thinking back to a couple posts ago where I was reflecting on how we can internalize literary characters, allowing them to live within us, in a way that we (or at least, I) cannot pull off with real human beings; the significance being is that it helps us understand why 'real' people come and go and disappear from our lives in a way that literary characters don't. However, in the end maybe that's OK. Since the other human beings are situated outside of us it increases the chances that they'll surprise us, hopefully in a good way, although my experience has been the opposite. Oddly, maybe it gives us a reason, although I suspect more likely an excuse, for not understanding them. It can free us. As the Kate Winslet character Clementine says in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, "But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours." 

My Year With Proust - Day 16

   "Had my parents allowed me, when I read a book, to pay a visit to the country it described, I should have felt that I was making an enormous advance towards the ultimate conquest of truth.  For even if we have the sensation of being always enveloped in, surrounded by our own soul, still it does not seem a fixed and immovable prison; rather do we seem to be borne away with it, and perpetually struggling to pass beyond it, to break out into the world, with a perpetual discouragement as we hear endlessly, all around us, that unvarying sound which is no echo from without, but the resonance of a vibration from within."

Marcel Proust,  Swann's Way, p. 90

Yes, we are now less than two months away from the trip to Zanzibar.  Of course, the students will drive me quite mad long before then, what with their refusal to read emails or respect deadline or understand that there is a difference between Passport Photos and photos of passports (although, to be fair, I do need both).  While I think the Zanzibar trip to going to be an extraordinary educational experience for the students, and for Steve and yours truly as well, I also have some mixed emotions about it.  I was really happy when I was there before, so there will be enough appropriately Proustian moments and images that will probably leave me quite melancholy quite a bit of the time.  Still, it doesn't stop me from trying to share international experiences with my students.  A couple days ago I finished proposals for two more travel courses: 1) a Thanksgiving break trip for fall 2016 to Madrid and Lisbon with my friend Mike Kelly, and 2) a spring break trip for spring semester 2017 to India with my friend, titular little sister and boon travelling companion Cyndi Brandenburg.

On the way out to swim with dolphins, which we'll definitely be doing with the students.

Daniel Boone with a Fez, sort of

And another oddity that my son and I tracked down on our journey to the sunny South.  As before, we scoured the Web for roadside oddities, and while there were not as many as we would have liked (at least along Interstate 95), we did find some to help alleviate the monotony of the trip.  In Roanoke Rapid, North Carolina, which is actually pretty close to Garysburg (so you can take care of a couple must-see stops fairly quickly), we tracked down Daniel Boone with a Fez.  A fez?  Well, he was maintained by the local Shriners so there is some logic.  Undoubtedly he's actually Paul Bunyan, but Daniel Boone made more sense, I guess, in this part of the country. He needs a paint job, which would make the fez more visible, but I think the county needed the money for more pressing issues.

You can make out the Shriner's club in the background.

Gary took an instant liking to him.

It was such a gloomy day, that it was only by facing this direction could you get any detail in the picture.  Here you can more clearly make out the tin drum that made up the hat/fez.  And my son's long-suffering demeanor.

My Year With Proust - Day 15

   "Next to this central believe, which, while I was reading, would be constantly in motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime.  These were the events which took place in the book I was reading.  It is true that the people concerned in them were not what Francoise would have called 'real people'.  But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement.  A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathize with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift.  If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that is is capable of feeling any emotion either.  The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself.  After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall, which we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes.  And once the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our perception of them.  It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alternation, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 88-89

Wow, I think this is going to be one of those posts that keeps evolving over time, because there is so much in here that needs to be explored.  Maybe the best approach is to approach this more systematically and cull out the main points and address them one by one.

"It is true that the people concerned in them were not what Francoise would have called 'real people'.  But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a 'real' person awaken in us can be awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes . . ."

And not to be too existential here, but what exactly constitutes a 'real' person?  There are some literary characters who I care about far more than the vast majority of the population of the planet, not simply because I know much more about them, but also because they are more real to me.  This is not simply an issue of not knowing them because I haven't met them or haven't spent enough time with the 'real' person, because often I have met them and I have spent time with them.  So why are they not real, when they are flesh and blood and pay taxes, while more purely fictional characters are real?

". . . and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of 'real' people would be a decided improvement . . ."

"A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathize with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift."

"The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself."

"After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening,"

Proust is, as always, correct here.  It is exactly because we have brought the characters inside of us, fought their battles and suffered their heartbreaks internally, that we remember them.  Reading is a very active intellectual process, whereas watching media at a theater and especially at home is such a passive process (as any brain scan will reveal).  When we read we have to fashion the characters and their surroundings out of our imagination, so we own them in a way that we never do when we simply watch a film (as much as I love film); rather, they are too often merely reflected back at the screen, much like the light itself.  I think we absorb literary characters.  So, relating back to the initial point, is this because I have not let these 'real' people into my life - have not internalized them - like I have literary characters?

The Return of Babu

There's nothing profound here, especially as compared to the pseudo-intellectual ramblings that have dominated so many of my previous posts.  This is just a picture of my great friend, and office-mate, Bob Mayer from last year's graduation. Bob is just coming back from sabbatical and he's been missed, although it means we have to get the stuffed beaver down off his desk.

In the general tomfoolery preceding graduation we were discussing swapping off regalia for Omani or Uyghur hats to make the ceremony more meaningful - or at least amusing.

My Year With Proust - Day 14

"Despite the admiration that M. Swann might professor for these figures of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) that Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much as a plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the glottis or uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of the operator's instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular features were the very same as those which adorned the faces of certain good and pious and slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to see at mass, many of whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces of Injustice.  But in later years I understood that the arresting strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part play in each of them by its symbols, while the fact that these were depicted, not as symbols (for the thought symbolized was nowhere expressed), but as real things, actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more literal to their meaning, something more concrete and more striking to the lesson they imparted.  And even in the case of the poor kitchen-maid, was not our attention incessantly drawn to her belly by the load which filled it; and in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?"

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 85

As with so much of Proust, this passage opens up with the tangible, in this case the pregnancy of a kitchen maid, and then passes on to the transcendental, in this case the question of death.

M.Swann had compared the kitchen maid, "whose pregnancy had swelled and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical, squared outlines of her cheeks," to Giotto's painting of Charity.

My Year With Proust - Day 13

"It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realize the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 81

In this instance Proust is reflecting on meeting a young woman during a surprise visit to his uncle's house, the assumption being that the woman is a mistress or a proto-mistress or at least a woman who lives on the fringes of high society through her beauty.  I keep flashing back to John Singer Sargent's famous portrait of Madame X, although it certainly has no connection to this woman or this event.

Again, this has nothing at all to do with the story, but I do love this painting.  In today's hyper-sexualized world it's weird to think that Sargent had to go back and paint in the strap up on her shoulder because of public concern about morality.  Seriously, how many nudes are there in museums?  As with all things, I guess it's all context: the strap down potentially signifies intent, and she's a very real woman and not a Greek goddess (although she looks the part).

Sadly, I have no real experience maintaining a beautiful mistress in a luxurious upscale apartment. While academics have the requisite flexible schedule for for such adventures, we don't have the requisite fiscal flexibility.  It brings up an odd memory relating to my good friend Peter Straub.  Over ten years ago I was part of a Champlain College team that made a week-long visit to Dubai to check on the campus we had there at that time.  It was my first time overseas, and it's strange to think that over the years I've probably ended up spending as much time in the UAE than the rest of my international stops put together.  We were staying at a fairly dodgy hotel downtown, at least by Dubai standards. On the last night there, while the rest of the team was getting packed, Peter and I went down for a final beer in the hotel bar.  There was a remarkably bad house band performing - think of a Filipino version of Captain and Tennille (with two Tennilles, with hip boots, swaying). Anyway, the bar was full of Emirati and Saudi sheikhs and Russian prostitutes, and the prostitues were swarming the sheikhs and wisely ignoring the downtrodden American academics. As we left the band kicked into a cover of R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion, which, as I've often stated, was the most transcendent moment of my life.

What I was also thinking about relates to Proust's intent only tangentially.  I've met quite a few very talented, intelligent women who made it clear that they could walk away from their careers tomorrow without a second thought, while I dread the thought of retirement. Essentially, is this one of those societally dictated gender role issues?  And, granted, I'm making a quantum leap based on way too little evidence for the sake of argument.  I'm certainly not a Type A personality, and I've never thought of myself as being particularly career driven, although several people have identified me as a workaholic (while I think of myself as the laziest person in the world - parentally-imposed perceptions are hard to dislodge) so self-image is a dodgy thing.  That said, I have trouble imagining what I would do outside of my career, and even when I do try and imagine that eventuality it doesn't include puttering around the house. So, is this another one of those instances where society is limiting people because of designated roles, and who is being limited - the women in question or me?  Clearly, this is also a generational thing.  While Proust's generation seems to be light years away, in other ways in today's world one or two generations is at least on the other end of our the solar system (as any episode of Mad Men will tell you). In the end I would propose that I'm the one who has been, and still too often is, operating in a limited universe.  I'm really fortunate in that I truly love what I do, and thus it never, ever seems like work.  Not only do I get to live the life of the mind, but I get to spend time with amazing colleagues and students in their most intellectually hungry age.  In that way, I'm not really a good specimen for this case study anyway. So why am I even fretting over this?  As much as I don't want to even consider the notion, the clock is ticking on my academic career.  And there is a very small chance that I'll keel over dead as I cross the Wadi Rum on a camel (my preferred method of dying - and they could just heap some sand over me and me where I fell) so I need to consider what's next.

Garysburg

As I mentioned in an earlier posting my son and I entertained ourselves on the drive to Savannah by selecting oddities to visit.  Our goal was one "world's largest something" every day, but we ended up only successfully visiting one three of the four travel days.  However, we were able to swing by Garysburg, North Carolina on the way back. I'd like to say that it was the site of a new renaissance but instead of was a pretty sad little town dominated by a swampy petrochemical smell.  Granted, it was an overcast New Year's Day, so I'm sure it would have been hopping on other days.  We'll return some time because we want to get some souvenirs.

There's another picture of me trying to remove the bow so that we could get a picture of the town seal, but I didn't post that one (for the obvious reasons).

Our initial plan was to drive up early and spend New Year's Eve in the Garysburg Super 8 Motel, and obviously play Jason Isbell's song repeatedly, but the plans fell through.

My Year With Proust - Day 12

   "'Oh, I admit,' he went on, with his own peculiar smile, gently ironical, disillusioned, and vague, 'I have every useless thing in the world in my house there.  The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch of open sky like this.  Always try to keep a patch of sky above you life, little boy,' he added, turning to me. 'You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.'"

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 71

These are the words of M. Legrandin, a character who walks through a couple scenes early in Swann's Way.  He is an engineer, but also was known for being an unexpectedly good writer, and thus falls into that category of people who "imagine that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted." And so, according to Proust, "they bring to their regular occupations either a fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter, and conscientious."

There are a couple of things that I find really interesting about this passage.  First off, is the notion of ending up in a career for which we are not fitted.  This reminds me of my old friend Bill Farrington, who I really need to call, who was my best friend in college.  He ended up getting his CPA, not because he had any great love for accounting (I'm sure there must be folks who do) but because he had a natural talent for it.  In the end it led to a very successful career and I'm sure that he has no regrets, but I can just remember having a discussion with him at the end of our time together in college and as we were launching out into the uncertainty of our careers.  Maybe I was just amazed that someone had a talent for anything, because at the time I seemed to be utterly adrift.  Having a natural talent for something, even if it gave you no great pleasure, at the time seemed like a better option than apparently having no talent for anything at all, which is essentially how I viewed myself at the time. I had devoted a couple years at Franklin to pre-Med, not because I had any passion for the field, or for science for that matter, but mainly to please my father.  In my junior year, as I was flaming out in my science course, I decided to switch to history. Even while pursuing a double major in biology and chemistry I had found time to take a stream of history classes, which I found far more fascinating than my endless hours in labs - and I also ended up getting A's in all of them.  So, I switched to pre-Law, and actually applied to a couple law schools (and I think I'm still on the wait list at IU law school).  In the second semester of my senior year I ended up applying to a couple history graduate schools, mainly because I had to do something.  Half-way through the summer the University of Cincinnati called and offered me a TA position and a free ride scholarship.  Apparently the rightful recipient of the scholarship was hit by a meteorite, which is my fanciful recreation of the event and thus is absolutely false, and thus which I completely believe to be true. I intended to kill a year and figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing with myself.  That first semester the professor I was TA'ing for took off for a semester and I had to lecture in his place, and ended up loving it - and the rest is history.  I tell that story to my students sometimes, not because it is particularly interesting, but to remind them that they probably aren't supposed to know what they want to do with their lives at 18, when Champlain pushes them to make a decision, or even at 22 when they graduate - or maybe even at 56 when you're asking Proust for help. Mainly I'm trying to get them to relax, cut themselves a modicum of slack, and maybe listen to what life is trying to tell them.

The line about the need to "keep a patch of sky above your life" also speaks to me.  And its most basic level it hearkens back to Marcus Aurelius reminding us all that "the peace of green fields is always within us."  M. Legrandin through Proust, or Proust through M. Legrandin, reminds us, "You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs."  Now the question, of course, is to ascertain what your soul needs.  Even though Proust is talking metaphorically, it could very well be a "patch of sky."  One of my first year students this last semester, as part of his self-portrait, focused on the role of art, and the mistake he had made in repressing it as part of the desire to fit in at pragmatic, sensible, career-focused Champlain, in giving his life meaning and in making him happy - which I thought was a mature and sophisticated discovery of someone of such tender years.  Conversely, your life can feed and maintain your art.  As part of this year's exploration it seems I need to figure out what constitutes my "patch of sky."  Is it family?  It probably should be, although it hasn't necessarily been in the past, which I'm sure says something bad about me.  I think I was always dedicated to my family, but that might have related more to my well-documented desire to be the stand-up guy, the one you can always depend upon, than a sincere passion for it.  My friends will joke that my dream is to end my life having everyone in the world owe me something, and me owing no one else anything; such is my mania for being considered strong and dependable; for being, and, yes, I will have to own how sexist this sounds in 2016, a man. I love my son without reservation, and I loved my first wife very much, but I also didn't fight hard enough to make a better family life or a better marriage.  And in the end was being unhappy actually part of the self-perpetuating mythology of the long-suffering man who still did what it took to get through the day?  Unpleasant thoughts for a bitterly cold January day in Vermont.  Still, you can't build anything until you create a solid foundation, and you can't create a solid foundation until you tear down the flawed structure that stood there.  Clearly, I have a lot of work to do.  Stupid Proust . . .