I love when books come to us at the right time; this was the case with Swann’s Way. Swann’s Way is the first of seven volumes that make up Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the longest novel ever written. When my sister and I took to reading it, we lived in different worlds and hardly knew about the others’. Proust helped us weave our sisterhood back together and to make sense of the ways our pasts, presents, and futures flow in an ever-evolving dance.
This series is a compilation of 12 autobiographical-fiction letters between two sisters, inspired by the reading of Swann’s Way (which is also considered to be a semi-autobiographical work). Each letter is illustrated and illuminated by artwork from ZO’s Blue Expo, blending the visual and the linguistic, to open the mind. I hope you’ll journey with us, reflect on your lives and quests, and expand your hearts and awareness through art and through time. — Catie Jarvis
[This webpage contains Parts I — III of the Letters]
I.
DEAR SISTER,
Journey Together – In Search of Lost Time
“…it seemed to me that I myself was what the book was talking about…”
(Swann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Translation by Lydia Davis)
By
Catie Jarvis & Bonnie Jarvis
Art by DANIELLE O’HANLON — ZO Magazine Touch of Blue Expo | Abstract 1st Place
Art by TANIA RITKO —͞ ZO Magazine Blue Expo | Surrealism 1st Place
Dear Sister,
Summer has come on fast and it’s hot in the valley. I read outside by my pool, already splash marks on the pages of Swann’s Way though I’ve only just begun. Sky runs full speed across the hot cement till her feet burn. Chlorine skin. I drink too much iced coffee to quell the high-pitched screeches of little girl laughter, turning seamlessly to tears, and back again.
Wet paged books remind me of our childhood, reading on the boat, the dock, in the hot tub. Do you remember that time? Our parents’ tenderness as important as Proust’s kiss from his mother. Falling asleep with the sweet angst of all we didn’t yet know about our lives and the world. Can you imagine a time before regrets, before failure and unkindness, before great loss? When I look at three-year-old Sky, I can see that we all begin so pure. That this perfection is always within us. Though, at times, it may feel lost.
Proust is tedious already, no doubt, with sentences that carry on for pages. I find myself losing the trail and having to go back. Still, Proust pulls on me, grasping adrift pieces within. Like on page 23, when the main character (does he have a name yet?) says, “We pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him.”* He talks of Swann, the way he looked when the narrator was a child and knew so little, versus the way Swann looks years later, when, presumably, the narrator knows much more. I see people in this way too. I can remember the way that certain people looked when I first saw them, and the way they changed once I knew them. Often, softening into beauty, though sometimes, with a rare dislikable person, morphing into something ugly and obscene.
Sometimes, when I hadn’t seen you in years, I would get so anxious. As if you might have become something monstrous that I wouldn’t recognize. But then, upon finally seeing you in some parking lot or casino or hovel, I always felt a great relief. Thinking: Yes, thank goodness, my sister – all the versions I’ve known, from infant, to child, to beautiful tortured woman. I always loved you. Even before you entered this world. Even during the times when you couldn’t love me back.
It’s hard to say what makes a great piece of writing, and yet, as lifelong readers, when we see one, we know. We’ve always agreed on art. It connects us. Though we are in such different places in our lives right now, both physically and metaphysically, I am grateful that we can read Proust’s novel, together. Find ourselves inside of it. And maybe find each other too.
Love always,
C.
________________________
* Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Vintage Books, 1982.
II.
SISTER,
By
Catie Jarvis & Bonnie Jarvis
It is 3:38 PM and we are locked down for count. This is when I can write, when I can read, when I can think.
The silence that normally eludes this place seeps in for a moment. I’m already 120 pages into Proust, but I think I’m going to start again.
Organic 1st Place | Art by Lorena Kloosterboer
It’s easy to read fast in here, devour the pages like a drug and only ever end up wanting more. But I am trying to learn how to take my time, how to savor the presence of the world in front of me instead of consuming it. I’m excited about this. Even now, the main character has no name, but that works for me. He is me, he is you, he is us. He is childhood and memory and place and time, both singular and infinite.
He says himself, “The subject of the book detached itself from me, I was free to apply myself to it or not.” (Pg 3. Combray, Part I.) Proust’s writing has a stream of consciousness that resonates with me. He is like the deep bass voice of a movie narrator, painting shades that image alone cannot portray. I narrate life in my head this way. To the point of distraction, honestly. I wonder if other people do this too? I don’t know if I try to create depths that aren’t there or if it’s only I that can see them. Either way, I find Proust’s writing symbolic- What is life but a continuous run-on sentence with all its various hills and valleys to be explored?
Its 3:54 now, six minutes until count time, “Cuenta.” The C.O.’s will announce over the intercom, any minute now, “Charlie unit, count time! Doors open, stand up, masks on, NO TALKING!”
Surrealism Finalist | “Fragile” Art by Emel KARAKOZAK
We stay in our rooms (it’s a faux pas to call them cells in prison, I’ve learned) until 4:30 PM, the computers turn on at 5, and then I will try to type this to you before they call for “mainline” (dinner). Our rec time is at 6 tonight. It’s nice, the weight room is outside under a roof — so on nights when we have rec, we get to watch the sunset. Pink and purple and blue gradients over the California-sun-bleached hills in the distance, beyond our fences and razor wire.
I think our lives, you and I, are in a weird symbiotic contrast right now and I think it will be really cool to string them closer together through Proust … a journey together, in search of lost time 🙂 ♥
Love you always and always will,
B.
III.
DEAREST SIS,
Art: “Apocatopia” — By Maroula Blades (UK)
Blue Expo Surrealism Finalist
By
Catie Jarvis & Bonnie Jarvis
Art by Andrew Jordan — ZO Magazine Blue Expo | Organic Category Finalist
Yes, a journey together, in search of lost time.
You’ve stated it so simply. So perfectly.
It is our journey. One which for a time I believed lived only in the past. But alas, here we are in the present, imagining up a future, weaving words together inspired by a Parisan man writing a meandering novel in the early 20th century, which he never even saw come fully into fruition in his lifetime.
I dream that someday just you and I will go to Paris together. And explore and eat and walk and see the world as if through a story. And maybe this will be many years from now. But if it happened at all in this lifetime, I’d be so pleased!
The child has awoken from her nap, cries for attention and hunger.
Will write more soon.
XO,
C.
Abstract Finalist | “Mindful Journey” Art by Denise Cumming
Catie Jarvis is an author of fiction, as well as a yoga instructor, a competitive gymnastics coach, an English and writing professor, a surfer, and a mom. She received her B.A. in writing from Ithaca College, and her M.F.A. in creative writing from the California College of the Arts.
Bonnie Jarvis is Catie’s Sister and these 12 short pieces are writings between them. As you will note, the closing of each letter is signed either “B” for Bonnie, or “C” for Catie.
