Every day I went out with Albertine. She had decided to take up painting again and had chosen as the subject of her first attempts the church of Saint-Jean-de-la-Haise which nobody ever visited and very few had even heard of, which was difficult to get directions to, impossible to find without being guided, and laborious to reach in its isolation, more than half an hour from Epreville station, after one had long left behind the last houses of the villages of Quetteholme.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 1026
OK, on the surface this sounds like the very definition of another White Privilege problem, but nevertheless I was drawn to this particular passage. For the first time in a while I felt myself being drawn to Albertine, mainly because of her desire to head off the beaten path and to explore new areas - and, yes, I am cognizant of the obvious sexual metaphor Proust is constructing.
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