The Boys - September 2016

Just wanted to post a picture of my son and his cousin Garrett, my sister Lisa's son, from this last week.  They met up in Cincinnati.  They're the two oldest grandkids and have always been close.  As Gary said to Garrett once, "You're like the brother I never wanted."

Despite the grief they give each other, it makes me happy that they will always have each other as my generation slides off the cliff.

My Year With Proust - Day 246

   This time, Albertine had returned to Paris earlier than usual. As a rule, she did not arrive until the spring, so that, already disturbed for some weeks past by the storms that were beating down the first flowers, I did not distinguish, in the pleasure that I felt, the return of Albertine from that of the fine weather.  It was enough that I should be told that she was in Paris and that she had called at my house, for me to see her again like a rose flowering by the sea.  I cannot say whether it was the desire for Balbec or for her that took possession of me there, perhaps my desire for her was itself a lazy, cowardly, and incomplete form of possessing Balbec, as if to possess a thing materially, to take up residence in a town, were tantamount to possessing it spiritually.  Besides, even materially, when she was no longer swaying in my imagination before a horizon of sea, but motionless in a room beside me, she seemed to me often a very poor specimen of a rose, so much so that I wanted to shut my eyes in order not to observe this or that blemish of its petals, and to imagine instead  that I was inhaling the salt air on the beach.

   I may say all this here, although I was not then aware of what was to happen later on.  Certain, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps, or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues.  But the example of other collections should be a warning to use to diversify, to have not one woman only but several.  Those charming associations that a young girl affords with a sea-short, with the braided tresses of a statue in a church, with an old print, with everything that causes one to love in her, whenever she appears, a delightful picture, those associations are not very stable.  Live with a woman altogether and you will soon cease to see any of the things that made you love her; though it is true that the true sundered elements can be reunited by jealousy.  If, after a long period of living together, I was to end by seeing no more in Albertine than an ordinary woman, an intrigue between her and some she had loved at Balbec would still perhaps have sufficed to reincorporate in her, to amalgamate with her, the beach and the unrolling of the tide.  But these secondary associations no longer captivate our eyes; it is to the heart that they are perceptible and fatal.  We cannot, under so dangerous a form, regard the renewal of the miracle as a thing to be desired.  But I am anticipating the course of years.  And here I need only register my regret that I did not have the sense simply to keep my collection of women as people keep their collections of old quizzing glasses, never so complete, in their cabinet, that there is not room always for another and rarer still.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 364-365

Albertine has reentered Marcel's life, and he's honest in that he, upon reflection, can't decide whether it was a desire for you or a desire for his time with her and her friends at Balbec that is attracting him. "I cannot say whether it was the desire for Balbec or for her that took possession of me there, perhaps my desire for her was itself a lazy, cowardly, and incomplete form of possessing Balbec, as if to possess a thing materially, to take up residence in a town, were tantamount to possessing it spiritually."  It does bring up the question of how much of our desire for a woman is actually a desire for a fleeting connection to a remembered, or romanticized, past.  Marcel also points out that he didn't know that at the time, of course, but only late.

With the wisdom - and cynicism - of experience he's really not certain if devoting yourself to one woman is even a logical idea.  Proust writes, "Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps, or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues.  But the example of other collections should be a warning to use to diversify, to have not one woman only but several."  Just as one should diversify one's investments in the stock market, one should diversity one's investment in women.  Maybe one of them will actually pay off.  "And here I need only register my regret that I did not have the sense simply to keep my collection of women as people keep their collections of old quizzing glasses, never so complete, in their cabinet, that there is not room always for another and rarer still."  Of course, how much of this statement is a fabricated cold world-weariness which passes for experience.  No matter how we read the passage, at the very least his feelings for Albertine have definitely changed - at least for the moment.

He adds, "Live with a woman altogether and you will soon cease to see any of the things that made you love her; though it is true that the true sundered elements can be reunited by jealousy."  Again, is this true world-weariness or merely posing to appear more "sophisticated" than he really is.  However, there is definitely some truth to the observation, and maybe that is what has drawn Albertine back to him.  Is she lonely or she is jealous, in this case not of a particular woman, but a life that he is leading that does not include her.  Women are often jealous, although less of other women than of an imagined world that doesn't feature them.

My Year With Proust - Day 245

. . . Suddenly, although I had heard no bell, Francoise opened the door to introduce Albertine, who entered smiling, silent, plump, containing in the plenitude of her body, made ready so that I might continue living them, come in search of me, the days we had spent together in that Balbec to which I had never since returned.  No doubt, whenever we see again a person with whom our relations - however trivial they may be - have now changed, it is like a juxtaposition of two different periods.  For this, there is no need for a former mistress to call around to see us as a friend; all that is required is the visit to Paris of someone we have known day by day in a certain kind of life, and that this life should have ceased for us, if only a week ago. On each of Albertine's smiling, questioning, self-conscious features I could read the questions: "And what about Madame de Villeparisis? And the dancing-master?  And the pastry-cook?" When she sat down, her back seemed to be saying: "Well, well, there are no cliffs here, but yo don't mind if I sit down beside you, all the same, as I used to do at Balbec?"  She was like an enchantress offering me a mirror that reflected time.  In this she resembled all the people whom we seldom see now but with whom at one time we lived on more intimate terms.  With Albertine, however, there was something more than this.  True, even in our daily encounters at Balbec, I had always been surprised when I caught sight of her, so changeable was her appearance.  but now she was scarcely recognisable.  Freed from the pink haze that shrouded them, her features had emerged in sharp relief like those of a statue.  She had another face, or rather she had a face at last; her body too had grown.  There remained scarcely anything now of the sheath in which she had been enclosed and on the surface of which, at Balbec, her future outline had been barely visible.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 363-364

"She was like an enchantress offering me a mirror that reflected time."

And Albertine has unexpectedly returned to visit Marcel in Paris, just as he was preparing to head out for the evening.  Everyone knows that Albertine plays a huge role in Remembrance of Things Past so it was just a matter of time before she made a reappearance.  What is different this time is that she is the one seeking him out, but why?  When reading this passage, and reflecting upon this question, I kept thinking of Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book, a work which I have often used in class and which I always recommend to my students.  A thousand years ago she was a contemporary, although apparently not a friend, of Lady Murakami, the author of The Tale of Genji.  Between the two of them they produced two of the greatest works of Japanese literature.  Not a novel, but rather a serious of brilliant and often biting observations, The Pillow Book usually feels completely modern in a way that The Tale of Genji does not.  In a section entitled "Things That Have Lost Their Power' Shonagon writes of, not surprisingly, things that have lost their power":

A large boat which is high and dry in a creek at ebbtide.
A woman who has taken off her false locks to comb the short hair that remains.
A large tree that has been blown down in a gale and lies on its side with its roots in the air.
The retreating figure of a sumo wrestler who has been defeated in a match.
A man of no importance reprimanding an attendant.
An old man who removes his hat, uncovering his scanty top-knot.
A woman, who is angry with her husband about some trifling matter, leaves home and goes somewhere to hide.  She is certain that he will rush about looking for her; but he does nothing of the kind and shows the most infuriating indifference.  Since she cannot stay away for ever, she swallows her pride and returns.

I bring this up, not simply because I love The Pillow Book and need to give it a reread, but also because I think it gives us an insight into Albertine's reasons for suddenly dropping into see Marcel.  He's not in love with her anymore - at least for the moment (and that brings up all sorts of room for discussion/debate down the road, both in regards to Marcel and to all of us) - and thus she has lost her power over him.  In all of Shonagon's examples there is a mixture of sadness and pity and disdain, as well as a hint of the pathetic.  Is this what we're supposed to feel for Albertine at this moment?  If nothing else, why has she lost her power of Marcel (at least for this moment)?  He notes that she has changed, and was "scarcely recognisable", although that can both reflect her altered physical state and his changing emotional state.

Proust writes, "She was like an enchantress offering me a mirror that reflected time."  When I was engaged to the lovely young British woman a few years ago I often found it painful to look at pictures of the two of us together.  It was only then that I realized the tremendous age difference.  When we were together on a daily basis it never occurred to me, but it was only we were held up to a mirror that that it hit me.  Looking at pictures of the two of us together didn't make me feel virile or proud (although I was incredibly proud of her and to be with her) but instead it just made me feel sad.  I could look at the pictures of her on my desk or my nightstand for hours on end, but found it difficult to look at pictures of us together.  A lot of it, naturally, was just vanity, but what is more beautiful than youth and beauty and vitality, and more enervating for those who don't possess these attributes any more?  That said, I think it also made me sad because it was a startling reminder that I would die a lot earlier and thus fail her, leaving her alone when she was in her fifties.  That "mirror that reflected time" is also held up to us when we meet people that we haven't seen in decades.  Some people never seem to age, but others have so clearly suffered the ravages of time that after exchanging names we, hopefully gracefully, find ourselves staring at them intently and trying desperately to pick out the remnants of who they used to be.  And we think to ourselves, "My God, they've aged poorly."  Then we come home, and look in the mirror, and have to come to terms with the fact that they probably thought the same thing about us (and probably more truthfully) - and suddenly we understand the passage of time in a way that we don't when we lie to ourselves before the mirror every morning.

Oh, and I thinking I'm officially adding The Pillow Book to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as potential blog "texts" for when/if I finish meandering through Remembrance of Things Past.

My Year With Proust - Day 244

It depressed me all the more that I should be spending this Sunday alone because I had sent a note that morning to Mlle de Stermaria.  Robert de Saint-Loup, whom his mother had at length succeeded - after painful abortive attempts - in parting from his mistress, and who immediately afterwards had been sent to Morocco in the hope of forgetting the woman he had already for some time ceased to love, had sent me a line, which had reached me the day before, announcing his imminent arrival in France for a short spell of leave.  As he would only be passing through Paris (where his family were doubtless afraid of seeing him renew relations with Rachel), he informed me, to show me that he had been thinking of me, that he had met at Tangier Mlle or rather Mme (for she had divorced her husband after three months of marriage) de Stermaria.  And Robert, remembering what I had said to him at Balbec, had asked on my behalf for an assignation with the young woman.  She would be delighted to dine with me, she had told him, on one of the evenings which she would be spending in Paris before her return to Brittany.  He told me to lose no time in writing to Mme de Stermaria, for she must certainly have arrived.

   Saint-Loup's letter had come as no surprise to me, even thought I had had no news of him since, at the time of my grandmother's illness, he had accused me of perfidy and treachery.  I had grasped at once what must have happened.  Rachel, who liked to provoke his jealousy (she also had other causes for resentment against me), had persuaded her lover that I had made sly attempts to have relations with her in his absence.  It is probable that he continued to believe in the truth of this allegation, but he had ceased to be in love with her, which meant that its truth or falsehood had become a matter of complete indifference to him, and our friendship alone remained.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 360-361

We're still revving up at the beginning of Chapter Two.  Marcel may still be in pain because of his grandmother's passing, but there are assignations to be planned; such is the mindlessness of the young (I'd normally say the young man, but Rachel didn't display much understanding or compassion either).  While Marcel's grandmother was dying Robert had sent him a letter accusing him of "perfidy and treachery," inspired by Rachel trying to make him jealous.  Before I go any further I would like to announce that I'm now changing the title of my autobiography to Perfidy and Treachery: the Gary Scudder Story (coming to used and remainder bookstores soon).  I was involved with a woman once who told me (normally this is where I point out that I'm paraphrasing, but I remember this clearly), "If you ever cheat on me I will fuck every one of your friends."  It's funny how the fragility of the male ego makes that such an effective threat, and how any argument which may start at DEFCON 5 quickly ascends the scale to DEFCON 1 when you insert that level of mutually assured nuclear destruction.  However, that threat only works when you're in love with the woman.  As Proust writes, Robert "had ceased to be in love with her, which meant that its truth or falsehood had become a matter of complete indifference to him, and our friendship alone remained."  Once love (and time) has passed, then it's just a topic of conversation among the boys.

Discography - Week 20

We will be hard-pressed to match last week's brilliance, but this group never fails to amaze me.  Last week's unofficial theme was pain; this week I think we're taking a break from all the angst.  As the Drive-By Truckers remind us, It's Great to Be Alive.

Gary Beatrice

Bottle Rockets, Welfare Music

I love The Drive-By Truckers and Uncle Tupelo and debating which band is better and which was more responsible for the advent of alt.country, Americana, roots rock, No Depression, whatever it is... But there is a third band that should absolutely be in that conversation: the pride of Festus, Missouri, the Bottle Rockets.

Part of the reason that The Bottle Rockets are criminally overlooked is that their albums tend to have their share of filler. I'd stack "The Brooklyn Side" up against anything in the genre, but even it has three or four songs that I never need to hear again, unlike, say "Anodyne". On the other hand, a playlist of the Bottle Rockets 15-20 best songs would stand up with any band's over the past couple decades.

Fans and critics credit the band for their ability to channel Merle Haggard one moment and Crazy Horse the next, but I believe Brian Henneman isn't given enough credit for his song writing. His style is very direct story-telling, and in many ways it reminds me of Tom T Hall, another vastly underrated song writer. Henneman's forte, and he displays it best in Welfare Music, is twofold: first he has the ability to establish characters that listeners to relate to with just  a lyric or two. Secondly he can present the characters, warts and all, and typically still leaves the listener sympathizing with these flawed, but real Americans.

John Hiatt has covered Welfare Music. If that doesn't convince you that Henneman's a great songwriter than nothing ever will.

Dave Wallace

The Kinks, I'm Not Like Everybody Else

I've been a Kinks fan for decades, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd somehow missed this song until about ten years ago.  My teenage self would have completely related to Ray Davies's ode to individuality, and the song still resonates with me.  Plus, it's a great example of early period Kinks, which is a fantastic, fascinating part of the British Invasion.

Dave Kelley

My choice was actually inspired by a post from last week.  Now Nate's post caused me to spend much of Saturday afternoon listening to Irish music and pondering lost causes and those evil fucking English.  I am just starting on a binge of listening to Van Morrison and James Brown thanks to GB and DW.  But it was Mike's comments that are behind my selection. 

I do not work in academia, but damn did I spend a lot of years in school.  College, grad school, and law school meant that I had completed the 21st grade by the time it was all said and done.  Unlike the academics on the blog, I do not think of the start of school in terms of New Year.  I think of it in the way that many think of spring.  A new start, a rebirth of sorts.  It ushers in my favorite season of the year, baseball is reaching its climax, college and pro football are beginning, and literally every product that is sold in America suddenly become available with pumpkin spice!!!!  I especially enjoyed college and was happy when it would begin in August or September.  New classes, new experiences, new possibilities, and a new crop of co-eds with whom to fail miserably. 

That started me to thinking about the music that was popular in the early to mid eighties.  Not only is a lot of it just amazing, but it reminds me of a specific time in my life that was generally happy and trauma free.  REM and The B-52's jumped into my head immediately, but I went with a different band that captures that time for me.  

Take a quirkily charismatic lead singer who comes across like Norman Bates had he chosen music over hotel/motel management, a kick ass husband and wife rhythm section, and post-punk, new wave music that also incorporated world music.  What do you get?  Correct ladies and gents.  The Talking Heads!!!!!   I was never really certain what much of their lyrics meant.  Who cares.  The music was great, the lyrics were memorable even if you didn't know why, and everything just went together.

The Talking Heads, Life During Wartime

"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around."

I really have no specific comments about the song other than the fact that I love it.  Check out the attached live footage from the Stop Making Sense tour.  They supplement their four person lineup with an extra guitarist, an extra keyboard player, and two fucking amazing back-up singers.  This performance is just filled with joy which is not something that immediately leaps to mind with this band on record.  They play and sing the hell out of the song and burn many many calories while doing so.  I love bands that take it to a different level on stage.  I find this live version life affirming. 

So, "Why stay in college?  Why go to night school?"  Well obviously so you can meet others who did the same and form an awesome music blog of course.

Miranda Tavares

Miranda's Pick, a three-fer: Reverend Peyton and His Big Damn Band, Raise a Little Hell and Clap Your Hands (yes, all kinds of cheating, two bands, and even two songs from one band); The O's, Outlaw

Dave Kelly posted about Darrell Scott a couple of weeks ago. I was at that show, and I absolutely second everything he said. However, he left out the thing that struck me the most about that show. Scott spoke to the crowd quite a bit, in a very natural, totally anti -"you make me want to shout 'shut up and play music'" way, and one of the things he spoke about was his guitar. He had several, but the one that riveted me was his baritone acoustic. I am not a musician, and literally all of my knowledge of playing music comes from seasoned (and un-seasoned, I guess) musicians enlightening me for the 17 seconds in between songs during shows. He said his guitar was cobbled together from various other guitars by a guy in L. A. who was a genius who taught other geniuses who just happened to also be misspent youths to cobble together guitars for a living. The result was...physics-breaking? I am not up on my science terminology, having left all that behind during my years pursuing various degrees of the soft sciences, but I have no other word for it. Simply put, it seemed as though there was no earthly way all that rich, complex sound could have come from one man, let alone one instrument. Let's pause a moment here and all hail the baritone acoustic built by L.A. juvenile delinquents. Seriously. Please do it. Dave and I would be less complete without those yutes.

So that whole experience led to my realization that I appreciate a big sound from a small appearance, which led to this week's post. Reverend Peyton and His Big Damn Band is comprised of Rev Peyton on guitar, his wife Breezy on the washboard, and his brother on the drums. The sound, though, is twice as big. Apparently Rev Payton has gotten some flack for his big sound to the tune of accusations that he has a recorded bass line going during live performances, and as a result during shows he makes it a point to show how he plays the bass line with just his pinky and the guitar with the rest of his hand. Heartfelt confession here: I can't play guitar. Or bass. The idea of playing both at once...mind blown. That may be juvenile, ignorant, basic, whatever, but it's true. I am in awe of this guy. And this band. So much sound, so few people. However, at least they have three...

The O's are a duo out of Texas who unfortunately don't travel much further than Oklahoma. So, sorry guys, no live shows pending within reach. But by some stroke of luck we got to see them in Newport, KY (as a hand-picked opener for our beloved 500 Miles to Memphis). They are a duo. Two guys. With an acoustic, a banjo, a kick-drum, a dobro, a tambourine, and a harmonica. And both do vocals. Here's a big sound for a different reason - these guys are continually killing themselves. I told them they should change their name to Two One-Legged Men in an Ass-kicking Contest, but apparently they jettisoned their sense of humor in favor of more instruments. 

This post is really about these bands, and how much sound they can accomplish with so little, albeit in so many different ways. I chose the two Rev Peyton songs because their sound is so hard to conceptualize, and even harder over youtube, and I thought between these two picks everyone would have a good idea whether this was something they were into. I chose The O's' song (where does the apostrophe go????) because it is representative of their sound, and catchy, and I hope someone can definitively tell me the chorus lyrics. "We hope, we shape, we loathe"? "Revoke, reshape reload"? The difference seems crucial.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Here is the perfect ironic antidote to the ironic saddest song ever.
(Or not?)  And also how one nerdy quasi-music-theory-literate family
laughs and geeks out in a budget hotel room the night before an elite
private college move-in-day.  With so much cognitive dissonance, I'm
afraid it's all I will have to offer this week, and I am not sure that
even 15% of you will have the patience to see it through.

Mike Kelly

Reckless Kelly, Wicked Twisted Road 

Last night, my wife said she wanted to hop a plane and go to her 20th high school reunion at the very moment I was reading a surprisingly well-written student blog post about being sad about leaving his high school girlfriend.  While I stopped short of sending the heartbroken bro this song, the serendipitous happenstance of events made the blog choice an easy one this week.  

The metaphors are simple but they're not stupid.  The stew of first-love experiences described in the song covers just enough ground to capture the relative complexity of high school romance, all with enough critical distance to take seriously.  

However true these things are, here's the most interesting thing about a rather straightforward, good song:  Culturally, we often treat first love stories in two ways- either as nostalgic things to be laughed at by our older and presumably wiser selves or romanticized ideals about something had and lost. I think splitting the difference is between these is the most honest way to write about these moments in time.  Let's hear it from the Braun brothers: 

"My first love was a wild, sinful night/ran out with the big dogs- guess I had more bark than bite" 

Here, there's a jokey humility mixed in the bigger and more complicated idea that sex and love when mixed together create an unrivaled human emotion and for a teenage kid, that messes with you in unexpected ways.  

"My first love was an angry, painful song/wanted one so bad I went and did everything wrong" 

Face it- we've all been that loping, dumb golden retriever dressed up as a potential suitor in bar clothes only to have things sparkle briefly before fading to the black of un-returned phone calls. We learn from these "lessons in reality that come before too long" in hopes that songs like this one remain nostalgic reminiscences instead of the soundtracks to our lives.  

It's a wicked, twisted road. 

Gary Scudder

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Your Precious Love

OK, I've definitely taken a lighter approach this week.  I guess I could argue that it was me giving up on the thought of writing something profound, especially when Miranda would just put me to shame (I already have a fragile self-image [shut up]).  In this case, however, as has been my wont during the Discography discussion, I'm just writing about what I'm thinking about right now.  The other day at the gym I was listening to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and deciding which five songs I'm going to promote, but the album finished up a little early so I just slid into my Marvin Gaye Motown hits album.  Once again, I found myself blown away by the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell version of Precious Love from the United album.  I don't have anything profound to say other than the fact that it makes me happy.  Marvin Gaye was just so fucking cool.  It reminded me of his version of the National Anthem from the 1983 All-Star Game.  It is, along with Julius Erving and Oscar Robertson, the only things of interest ever to come out of the NBA.

My Year With Proust - Day 243

   Although it was simply a Sunday in autumn, I had been born again, life lay intact before me, for that morning, after a succession of mild days, there had been a cold fog which had not cleared until nearly midday; and a change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew.  Formerly, when the wind howled in my chimney, I would listen to the blows which it struck on the iron trap with as keen an emotion as if, like the famous chord with which the Fifth Symphony opens, they had been the irresistible calls of a mysterious destiny.  Every change in the aspect of nature offers us a similar transformation by adapting our desires so as to harmonise with the new form of things.  The mist, from the moment of my awakening, had made of me, instead of the centrifugal, being which one is on find days, a man turned in on himself, long for the chimney corner and the shared bed, a shivering Adam in quest of a sedentary Even, in this different world.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 358

And we say begin Chapter Two of The Guermantes Way.  Chapter One had ended with the passing of Marcel's grandmother, and here he is starting to shake himself loose.  Coming back into the world, whether we're recovering from true tragedy or simply a prolonged case of the blues, is in many ways a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon.  Sometimes we can "force" the issue by changing our environment or taking on new habits or getting out and dating again, and other times we just wait it out and the change occurs more organically.  Recently I downloaded the wonderful Patty Griffin album Living With Ghosts, which I can't seem to stop playing.  In her song Time Will Do the Talking, she sings, "Time will do the talking/ years will do the walking/ I'll just find a comfy spot and wait it out."  Other times you need to find someone, even just a new friend or a rediscovered old friend, and they can help you pull yourself out of the well; naturally, I'd default to Neil Young's Don't Let It Bring You Down.  Maybe the key is the recognition of your own miserable self.  There's a great Milan Kundera line which is teasing me at the moment but won't come into view - and I need to head to class - so it looks like I'll be coming back to this post.

Young's After the Gold Rush, still the best album cover ever.  He was just climbing out of one of my many early dark periods, and thus it formed a lovely metaphor.

My Year With Proust - Day 242

   "My poor child, you have only your Papa and Mamma to rely on now."

   We went into the sickroom.  Bent in a semi-circle on the bed, a creature other than my grandmother, a sort of beast that had put on her hair and crouched among her bedclothes, lay panting, groaning, making the blankets heave with its convulsions.  The eyelids were closed, and it was because they did not shut properly rather than because they opened that they disclosed a chink of eyeball, blurred, rheumy, reflecting the dimness of an organic vision and of a hidden, internal pain.  All this agitation was not addressed to us, whom she neither saw nor knew.  But if it was only a beast that was stirring there, where was my grandmother?  Yes, I could recognise the shape of her nose, which bore no relation now to the rest of her face, but to the corner of which a beauty spot still adhered, and the hand that kept thrusting the blankets aside with a gesture which formerly would have meant that those were oppressing her, but now meant nothing.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 348

   When my lips touched her face, my grandmother's hands quivered, and a long shudder ran through her whole body - a reflex, perhaps, or perhaps it is that certain forms of tenderness have, so to speak, a hyperaesthesia which recognises through the veil of unconsciousness what they scarcely need senses to enable them to love. Suddenly my grandmother half rose, made a violent effort, like someone struggling to resist an attempt on his life.  Francoise could not withstand the sight and curst out sobbing.  Remembering what the doctor had just said I tried to make her leave the room.  At that moment my grandmother opened her eyes.  I thrust myself hurriedly in front of Francoise to hide her tears, while my parents were speaking to the patient. The hiss of the oxygen had ceased; the doctor moved away from the bedside.  My grandmother was dead.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 357

Marcel's mother had finally passed away.  It's a good thing that it is a blindingly beautiful day in Vermont because otherwise this would remind me too much of my mother's recent passing, which would be obviously depressing as well.  That said, in some ways this passage provides hope instead of despair.  Proust writes, "a creature other than my grandmother, a sort of beast that had put on her hair and crouched among her bedclothes, lay panting, groaning, making the blankets heave with its convulsions."  As much as we romanticize a very lovely Hollywood ending where we remain beautiful and seemingly only tired - and have the time and the wit to say what has to be said - in fact we end up as shuddering beasts grinding through our final days.  There is a time when it is clearly time to pass on to the great unknown.  Sadly, technology has bypassed morality, and we keep people alive simply because we can, and not because we should.  Of course, that is only part of the conundrum.  Proust continues, "But if it was only a beast that was stirring there, where was my grandmother?"  Now that is naturally the $64,000 question.  There was a time when I would have accepted that the struggling, sweaty beast was Proust's grandmother (or my mother), but as I've grown older I just don't believe that anymore.  Like most religions try to tell us, it's just a vehicle, breaking down and long past its warranty, which we will eventually leave on the side of the road.