My Years With Proust - Day 728

   And something not unlike my grandmother's illness itself happened to me shortly afterwards, when I still had not started to work on my book, in a strange fashion which I should never have anticipated.  I went out to see some friends one evening and was told that I had never looked so well, and however it was that I had not a single grey hair.  But at the end of the visit, coming downstairs, three times I nearly fell.  I had left my home only two hours earlier; but when I got back, I felt that I no longer possessed either memory or the power of thought or strength of existence of any kind.  People could have come to call on me or to proclaim me king, to lay violent hands on me or arrest me, and I should passively have submitted, neither opening my eyes nor uttering a word, like those travellers of whom we read who, crossing the Caspian Sea in a small boat, are so utterly prostrated by seasickness that they offer not even a show of resistance when they are told that they are going to be thrown into the sea.  I had, strictly speaking, no illness, but I felt myself no longer capable of anything, I was in the condition of those old men who one day are in full possession of their faculties and the next, having fractured a thigh or had an attack of indigestion, can only drag on for a while in their bed an existence which has become nothing more than a preparation, longer or shorter, for a now ineluctable death.

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 1096-1097

Proust has already informed us that he's afraid that he won't have time, that his body won't cooperate, to finish his novel.  Almost on cue he suffers a moment of physical weakness, almost falling down the stairs three times.  Not only does it leave him physically shaken, but also intellectually shaken: "But at the end of the visit, coming downstairs, three times I nearly fell.  I had left my home only two hours earlier; but when I got back, I felt that I no longer possessed either memory or the power of thought or strength of existence of any kind." I'm falling apart physically, and, well, truthfully, I've always been a bit of a wreck considering that I had my first hip surgery at age fourteen.  Still, I plow away, and go to the gym everyday (including today).  My hip will still sometimes give way, causing me to stumble, and my left shoulder hurts so much that I often have trouble reaching over for a cup of coffee.  I'm not ignoring them, I just can't seem to convince the doctors to operate on them (I think they assume I'll just die on one of my overseas adventures and it would be a poor investment of time and effort).  I know that me losing my balance physically is not the same as me losing my intellectual abilities, but it is also true that the former impacts the latter.  I know that I'm not what I was, and what I was wasn't that impressive in the first place.  That said, I suppose we should be thankful for these little physical stumbles because it reminds us to get on with life.