VII.
Sister,
This series is a compilation of 12 autobiographical-fiction letters between two sisters, inspired by the reading of Swann’s Way — In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (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.
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These letters are being presented in 4 parts:
• Parts I — III
• Parts IV — VI
• Parts VII — IX — (You are here)
• Parts X — XII
• Blue Expo ARTS & LETTERS Only
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
Bruce Pollack — “Feeling Blue” — Blue Expo Collage Category | 1st Place
I’ve spent more harsh, cold nights in solitude than I can count now.
I find strength in myself. It was never being alone that intimidated me, but rather the fear of losing love. I once thought that love meant never giving up on someone, even at the expense of oneself… I was wrong. I no longer think that love comes from sacrifice. I’m not sure of its definition, but I like to think of myself as a student of its constant reconstruction throughout my life. I’m trying to live with more of it, to appreciate it as it is and not worry what it will be.
I think it’s the only thing that matters, the sanctity of love.
There are people I have come to love here, in this place. Forming a bond with someone that will inevitably end so quickly paints this beautiful mosaic of the here and now.
How much more present we are when we know something cannot possibly last?
How much more significant is each word, each breath when you know their limit is ever approaching?
Everything in here is a lesson in gratitude. In appreciating our finite lives.
I’m excited for you to start gratitude lists with Sky. It’s such an amazing way to view the world. I have lost so many of the resentments that I didn’t even know I had, simply by being grateful for what was instead of what I thought should have been.
They say that the #1 reason people become addicts, the core root of the problem, existentially, is the lack of purpose.
We are all only ever seeking a higher truth.
I don’t resent the path that I chose to search on. I know you and I have become unacquainted over the last few years, and I am sorry for that. In my absence, though, I have journeyed through myself and found someone that I am very proud to be, and I hope that you will come to know her, too. I’m still seeking, I believe I always will be but I’m trying to seek in different ways now. I see Sky and I see you and I’m filled with so much love that I can’t wait to give.
I’ve finished Combray, finally. You say the act of reading takes you back to those places of our childhood, but I tend to find my memories better in dreams. Our home and our islands live inside my dreams as vividly as Proust’s’ childhood memories.
I wonder why it is that I cannot find them as easily in my waking life as you? You connect the present back to the past so easily. Is it because, like Proust, you have honored so many of our memories by committing them to writing?
If ‘The Book’ is your object of memory, perhaps ‘The Storm’ is mine.
“When on summer evenings the melodious sky growls like a wild animal and everyone grumbles at the storm… I am the only one in ecstasy inhaling through the noise of the falling rain.” (pg. 190)
The Storm leads me back to the water, to the tarp-tie downs and swimming races to the buoy in the hammering rain. Wet canvas and slippery docks, watching pink lightning on top of boulder rocks, and sometimes I mourn the end of the storm because I feel more lost, less connected under blue skies, even though I know we have had so many of those too.
Maybe that’s always been the problem; I miss being together through the storms.
Hover over image for photo info
I’m excited to start this new chapter (of the book, of life). I think we are about to journey with him from childhood to love, and that feels…right.
Embarking on this book together feels right, also.
Do you ever feel like books come to you exactly when you need them? As if they have some kind of energy all their own?
My friend and I will sometimes lay together and read, and I swear I can feel the energy of the book she is reading, different from my own, as if they are their own entities. I should probably just give in and buy a crystal ball! Mommy told me she would still love me even if I found religion. How do you think she would feel about an obsessive preoccupation with energies? 😛 😀 🙂
Pictured: Mark Blickley — “Terminal Blue”
Text-based art collaboration with photographer Amy Bassin. It offers a doctor’s prescription on how to battle eMAD disease (extreme millennial anxiety disorder).
Click thumbnail for larger Photo
Ready for the next chapter? Let’s begin…
Love you always and always will,
B.
VIII.
Hi my sister,
It was a relief to finish the final pages of Combray tonight after Sky’s bedtime, as the dusk turned almost too dark for me to read by.
Who knew there could be so many ways to describe a flower? And what is a Hawthorn anyway? I’ll have to look it up.
It’s cool that now I’ll always remember the Meseglise and Guermantes Ways (I bet you can pronounce them much better than I can, with your background in French), and that they will remind me of this time, writing to you, Sky nearly four, this hot summer, more fulfilled than I’ve been before in my life, I think, and yet still longing for so much more.
Yes, I agree that books come to us when we need them, and when they must. I’d been thinking on when to read Proust and how, and then when we were on the phone that day, I understood.
Maybe Proust knows of the truths that we must seek for purpose. Or helps us see that the purpose is in the seeking. Maybe this is what makes him great?
I pictured your thunderstorm. The sound of it, the heavy air, the ropes thwacking and the cool humidity wrapping itself around our young lithe bodies. You didn’t even have to write Daddy in it, for him to be there, rushing around, wet and happy, protecting us, taking on the storm. So much like you. Sometimes I think you’re continuing his journey for him. The demons he couldn’t quite overcome, the truths he almost found.
I thought Combray rounded out in a satisfying way. Bringing to conclusion these reflections on memory. “That child dreaming,” (188), walking the literal paths of his youth, coming to know things, big things, that took him out of the pureness of childhood and lead him to what follows. And finally, the perfect kiss of a mother, that love, “without the residue of an intention that was not for me.” (189)
A love like he would never know again, for there is no other love like that, and yet, even that perfect love tormented him in its way. I feel wedged in this realization now – I am forever child and forever mother. It’s too bad our parents can love us so much and that we will still be tormented by their love, one way or another.
Blue Expo SURREALISM Category Finalist
Blue Expo SURREALISM Category Finalist
Overall, I like how the end of Combray ties to the beginning, as if it had all been a sort of imagined dream, in that moment before coming up to full conciseness, that space between sleep and waking, by the tricks of the light.
I can’t wait to really get to know you again too! It’s funny, I was thinking on my walk around the neighborhood today, when Sky was again pretending to call you with her hand-phone from the stroller she’s fast out growing, if she even realizes she’s never met you in real life. Like, she sees you on the screen and believes you’re as real as any person outside of one. A person can learn and accept anything when they are so young.
But it will be so cool when she sees you. For the first time in this life. I savor the thought of this moment when I let myself think it at all, still a bit afraid I might burst its possibility with the strength of my longing.
Hope you sleep well. Love you!
C.
IX.
Sister,
Artwork above: TANIA RITKO — “Tri Blue”
Graphic Designer | Collateral | Editorial Design | Photo Editor | Photography | Drawing and Painting | Illustration
Blue Expo | 3rd Place Win Surrealism
ELISE CANTRELL
“I’ve been drawing since I can remember, but I feel there is no limit to my creativity when I’m creating a digital painting on my phone.”
Have I mentioned I’ve been reading with a dictionary alongside?
From Proust: Anfractuosity- full of windings and intricate turnings. AKA – life.
Proust has me thinking that each journey is ultimately the same – a search for connection. The way he began his story with so much wildness and attentiveness to the growth of it and us all, the way we set down our roots and all the different branches we take searching for sustenance, for life?
I think that’s what I’m starting to understand — interconnectivity is all that matters. Nothing in this world truly stands alone. We are meant to connect, to be connected. And how much more beautiful of a purpose can there be?
Are you and Sky still remembering to do gratitude lists at night? I think of you both every night when I do mine. Another connection. It’s crazy to think that Mommy is on her way to you right now, traveling all those miles. Leaving the life she’s lived for sixty years behind in search of “home” which was never quite a place but was always you and me. I still miss the trees of the East Coast, my old friends. I’m jealous of all the ones Mommy will get to see on her journey west to us. I feel like I missed out on something, moving here the way I did. It was too abrupt. A transportation instead of a transformation. When I get out, I want all of us to plant something together, a new tree I’ve yet to see, something we can watch grow.
I love that Sky pretends to call me. That’s so cute. It will be strange when I am there in person for the first time since she’s only ever seen me virtually.
I wonder what it’s like to grow up with this knowledge of a digital world. I wonder how someone so young can even really grasp the understanding of it all?
What would Proust have thought? How would his writing have been different today?
♥
B.
Catie Jarvis is an author, English and Creative Writing Professor, yoga instructor, competitive gymnastics coach, surfer, wife, and mom. She grew up on a lake in northern New Jersey and now lives in Los Angeles. The Peacock Room is her first novel. Stop by catiejarvis.com, Instagram @30inLA
Bonnie Jarvis is a competitive horse trainer by profession and a writer, singer, and artist at heart. If she’s not riding a horse, then she’s probably reading a science fiction book, painting, playing flag football, or rescuing a kitten somewhere in Los Angeles.
As you will note, the closing of each letter is signed either “B” for Bonnie, or “C” for Catie.
This series is published in 12 Letters. Part X-XII continues at this link . . .
