A 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)

Dear Sister, 1

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.

Sister, 2

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. 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!” 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 sun set. 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.

Dearest Sis, 3

Yes, a journey together, in search of lost time. You’ve stated is 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 20^th 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.

Sister, Me again! 4

Proust is sweeping me away. He writes with no hint of a story line; he just seems to write… life. And then suddenly he will interject these philosophies, paragraphs that jump out of the page as if meant for only my eyes, only my mind.

“In me, too, many things have been destroyed that I thought were bound to last forever” (Pg 37).

I’m finding a lot of change in such a stagnant place. In myself. I’m lying in bed with beautiful things right now. I have Proust and your printed letters on my lap. It’s a sunny day outside that I can only observe from the small slit of a window behind me. But we make our own beauty in here. There’s an energy that exists between us as people, that I was vaguely aware of before this place, but it is stronger here, more prevalent because in here we need it, we need each other.

You asked me if I can imagine a time before regrets and failure, unkindness and loss and honestly, yes. Yes, I can… but it’s not a time before, it’s now. Proust says:

“For even if we have the sensation of being always surrounded by our own soul, it is not as though by a motionless prison: rather, we are in some sense borne along with it in a perpetual leap to go beyond it, to reach the outside, with a sort of discouragement as we hear around us always that same resonance, which is not an echo from outside but the resounding of an internal vibration” (pg. 88).

I think the capacity for regret, failure, unkindness, and loss always lived inside of us, it never didn’t exist. I think because of that it is possible to find, also within us, the capacity to exist autonomously from it. It’s so easy to find gratitude when deprived of the things we think we need. It’s hard to regret when you’re grateful to be where you are. It’s easy to be grateful for where you are when you know things can always get worse, when you’ve experienced the worst things.

I’m glad I never became monstrous to you. I was too distorted to become monstrous to myself. I think that’s what makes us so important to each other; no matter how much we change separately from one another we have always known the base of each other, in a way that no one else has or will ever be able to. When we see each other, we recognize ourselves as we were before and even if we won’t ever be as we were before again, it’s a comfort to be remined it was real and know someone else knows it too. “The souls of those we have lost are held captive…effectively lost to us until the day which for many never comes, when we happen to pass close… come into possession of the object that is their prison” (pg. 44). I know he’s speaking of death but the more I believe that we are transient beings made of more than just matter, the more I believe we are self-imprisoned.

It’s Father’s Day, I can’t help but think of Daddy and his own self imprisonment. I often wonder if he found freedom in death or if he only traded one captivity for another? I told you of my friend a few years ago who contacted me, unknowingly, on the anniversary of Daddy’s death to ask if anyone had ever died in our house? He said that the new owners had a “haunting” going on and it killed me to think it was Daddy stuck there waiting for us to come home. But I wonder if maybe, once we are all together again, he will know it and won’t have to wait any longer.

Every night before I go to sleep, I remind myself of three things I am grateful for. Sometimes they are small and silly, sometimes they are the big ones. Every day I try and find something beautiful. You and Sky should do it with me too and then we can tell each other all the beautiful things that the world has shared with us.

Love you always and always will,

B.

Sister, 5

By page 48, I’ve come to understand my first real thing about Proust. That everything he’s written so far is a meditation on the blooming of memory. All that can be lost and found within our complex beings.

That one on page 37 got me as well. “… and new ones have formed that have given birth to new sorrows and joys which I could not have foreseen then, just as the old ones have become difficult for me to understand.”

It’s maybe been years since I’ve thought on those sorrows of childhood. Isn’t that strange? I think that’s the thing about Proust. Through the details of his childhood in Combray, he makes me remember my own, and then makes me think about what memory is, how illusive, how brilliant, how out of our control. “The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach, in some material object… It depends on chance whether we encounter this object before we die, or do not encounter it.” Lines like that blow me away as well!

And as if this book is my object of memory, I remember. I remember being the child like Proust reading in the garden, reading anywhere, with the world of the book mixing with the world outside, and how it was always the book that held the most importance, taught me of a world full of emotion and trials that I was not yet apart of. I remember childhood nights, lying on that twin bed in my first small room, with the tree outside that I’d imagined I’d jump to and hide in if I ever needed to escape for some strange or unforeseen reason that I would contemplate, and make up, fire, intruder, alien invasion. But, in that bed, I could never have imagined the sorrows I have now, that is for sure, could not have imagined that the things of childhood that riled me up so, the way adults talked down to me, the emphasis on tests and scores in our education system, religion, death, the general competitive nature of human beings, would fade into the background as the weight of great losses and other important matters of life: where to live and who to love and when to have a child – took their place.

Of course, I thought of you too on Father’s Day, how you are the only one who knows our particular father, his particular love, struggles, and the particular sorrow of his loss. I’m grateful that you know this. I guess death still gets to me. One worry from childhood that does not fade into the background. I think if Daddy were to be haunting our old house, he’d be doing the sort of haunting where he made sure that all the windows were shut at night in the rain and that the engine had been lifted on the boat resting at dock, that sort of thing. But I do like your ideas about us being back together again, Mommy, you and I, and how it might bring him a peace he has been longing for. How it might finally set him free of the burdens he so heavily carried. Even if only in our minds, where it is my belief he lives most firmly. The ego dies hard. So, we remember. We read. We write.

Love always,

C.

Dear B., 6

I’ve started looking at the world in a Proustian way, searching for beauty. The details, long lingering phrases, minutia that can so easily go overlooked. The way a hummingbird lingers over a pink cacti flower in my garden or the sunlight dancing on the pool in glistening geometry. Proust writes so elegantly, slowly, a pace we no longer allow. To see the world this way, even a little, brings peace. Gratitude.

I will do the gratitude exercise with Sky, as you suggested. We will go in her tent before bed and think of three things we are grateful for. Imagine, if she could begin her life doing this, each night before bed. I feel that would be a gift of perspective. I hope it will be. A replacement for what others call prayer.

Proust makes me think of Sky’s budding mind and how much I’m responsible for its malleability and configuration. How she will come to contemplate this world. The conclusions she will draw, and redraw, throughout her life. You know, sister, your appreciation for the world brings me solace. You’ve always been such a positive person. “It’s easy to be grateful for where you are when you know things can always get worse, when you’ve experienced worse things.” That’s me, quoting you. I only hope that Sky can come to such perspective without so much strife.

I want to ask you about this passage on page 45, where Proust sees that, “Clearly, the truth I am seeking is not in the drink, but in me.” Where he discusses the taste of the tea and the cake. I wanted to know if this could perfectly describe addiction, the high you seek (similar or different from the high daddy sought?), and how that first time it was in search of some truth, that you almost found, but didn’t quite, and so had to keep repeating, only to see that each time, less and less truth came.

“The drink has awoken it in me, but does not know this truth, and can do no more than repeat indefinitely, with less and less force, this same testimony, which I do not know how to interpret and which I want at least to be able to ask of it again and find again, intact…”

I want to ask you, also, if you have found some strength in being on your own that you can carry with you? Like I found the year I lived alone in Venice Beach. It took me 32 years to see that I did not need anyone and that, perhaps, I was even my best self when alone. I try to hold that information still, to carry it with me, though with a husband and young child I am not often alone, I know that this phase too will pass, and someday I may be once again.

1. and I went away to Ojai this weekend, our first trip without Sky. It was nice to feel the focus shift back to myself, away from her. I missed her, but I still felt whole. That was a relief. A child, like a partner or a drug, can be another dependency. Reading by the pool all weekend with no toddler to interrupt, I was able to make some leeway, finally, on this book. I’m nearly done with Combray, though I’m sure you’re much further. Slow down!

Nearing the end of this section, it’s nice how much of the writing is about youth and summer. And reading. And how much youth and summer and reading are the bond that holds us together. And always will. On page 87, Proust couldn’t more clearly summarize my lifelong love affair with reading.

“… how he (the author) provokes in us within one hour all possible happiness’s and all possible unhappiness’s just a few of which we would spend years of our lives coming to know and the most intense of which would never be revealed to use because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them…”

Love you,

C.

Sister, 7

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.

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? 😛 😀 🙂

Ready for the next chapter? Let’s begin…

Love you always and always will,

B.

Hi my sister, 8

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.

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.

Sister, 9

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 I. 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 my 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.