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The Last of Swann In Love
Well, I spoke a little too soon. We are still deep in Swann's affair with Odette. There’s an Odette passage here I can’t ignore. This is while Swann is giving Odette an ultimatum about not going to the theater with the Verdurins and staying with him instead.
P223 “Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty. Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost tranquility had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if he went on speaking for any length of time she would ‘never’ as she had told him with a fond smile... ‘get there in time for the Overture.’”
Day 65 of Pandemic Shelter in Place. By my count. Every day there seem to be even more bees in the bush out my kitchen window. The bush overhangs our deck and I’ve wanted to trim it back for months, but I remembered how the bees love it, so I’m waiting until it stops flowering. The problem is that when the tiny flowers have done their job they fall apart and the debris falls on the deck where it doesn’t do anyone any good.
We’ve been having some May rain. Unusual but it does happen. It’s good in that it pushes our fire season back a few weeks, but otherwise doesn’t amount to much.
Now that we’re past mid-May and the COVID-19 curve is flattened and the numbers in some cases are coming down, people are starting to open up the economy again. I think this is inevitable. Already the damage done to San Francisco alone is almost unfathomable. I will have to be more careful as the city around me gets less careful, but taking a year off from business would just be too costly. San Francisco is stuck at 36 known COVID-19 related fatalities, which is about as good as we could have hoped for back in March. I’ve already decided that once things start to open up a bit, I will give in and join Amazon Prime so I can shop Whole Foods online and have it delivered. It’s been interesting eating what I can eat at my local markets, and I like supporting them, but I’m not eating as well, and I think shopping at places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s will soon be more dangerous than it is now. Now I just need to find a supply of better face mask/respirators.
Day 68 - As I walked my steep hike today I was doing a little corporate archaeology. Most of the telephone utility covers in the sidewalks were branded Pacific Bell, but I also found a more recent AT&T and a single SBC. The remaining covers were the even older Bell System survivors.
P236 “...his love extended a long way beyond the province of physical desire. Odette’s person, indeed, no longer held any great place in it... And this malady, which was Swann’s love, had so far multiplied, was so closely interwoven with all his habits, with all his actions, with his thoughts, his health, his sleep, his life, even with what he hoped for after death, was so entirely one with him that it would have been impossible to wrest it away without almost entirely destroying him; as surgeons say, his case was past operation.”
Love is a malady to Swann and Marcel. You can’t really envy them the success they have in love as it seems to take them over like a cancer. And since we are graced with an omniscient narrator here and get Odette’s perspective as well as Swann’s, The object of Swann’s affection is not really all that impressed with his love. It is certainly good for business, but, this reading, I’m finding it hard to disagree with Swann’s middle class neighbors back in Cambray. It is indeed an unfortunate marriage, or will be.
P237 “...Once when, because it was the birthday of the Princesse de Parme... he had decided to send her a basket of fruit, and was not quite sure where or how to order it, he had entrusted the task to a cousin of his mother who, delighted to be doing a commission for him, had written to him laying stress on the fact that she had not chosen all the fruit at the same place, but the grapes from Crapote, whose specialty they were, the strawberries from Jauret, the pears from Chevet, who always had the best, and soon, ‘every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself.’ And in the sequel, by the cordiality with which the Princess thanked him, he was able to judge of the flavor of the strawberries and of the ripeness of the pears. But, most of all, that ‘every fruit visited and examined, one by one, by myself’ had brought balm to his sufferings by carrying his mind off to a region which he rarely visited, although it was his by right, as the heir of a rich and respectable middle-class family in which had been handed down from generation to generation the knowledge of the ‘right places’ and the art of ordering things from shops.”
Day 69 - I managed to get one of the things I most crave during Shelter In Place, a good San Francisco burrito. Weeks ago I rejected the idea of walking down into the Tenderloin to my usual favorite taqueria, but today there was a taqueria food truck parked a block away so I jumped at the opportunity. This has the potential to be a protracted Good luck, Bad luck, Who knows? Series, but it is at least starting off well.
The plumber, who I had reservations about calling for a very minor problem, was running late so I decided to take my walk at an unusual time, the Noon hour. While walking I noticed the food truck parked in front of a large apartment building a block away from me. I had to go home to get money, but I returned and ordered my burrito. It was good and big. Not as good as Cancun, but it answered my craving.
Of course if I get sick in around a week, I will have to wonder if this is the reason why. But then again, catching COVID-19 could itself be either a good or bad thing. Worst case I die in a very San Francisco way. Recently I’ve been rating San Francisco deaths and 1. Is being hit by cable car; 2. Is dying as a result of climbing a hill -- as the Emperor Norton died; and 3. Could be as a result of eating a classic SF burrito. Dying in an earthquake may trump all of these, but that’s not something that can happen very often.
We’ve finally made it to the “evening” at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s, when we are first introduced to Paris society. If I started quoting here it would be hard to stop, so I’m going to skip even our introduction to Oriane, at this point still the Princesse des Laumes -- not counting that mention of her earlier in the section -- and go to where the evening returns to Swann’s story.
P264 “...Swann saw that he could now not go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love... they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone...
“But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore him with such an anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes, on which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which it prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation with which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a desperate effort it continued until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired, to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength, that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had time to understand what was happening, to think: ‘It is the little phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata. I mustn’t listen!’, all his memories of the days when Odette had been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned again, but awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present isolation, the forgotten strains of happiness.
P265 “In place of the abstract expressions ‘the time when I was happy,’ ‘the time when I was loved,’ which he had often used until then, and without much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality, he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all... At that time he had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who live for love alone. He had supposed that he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also...
P267 “He felt that he was no longer in exile and alone since she [the little phrase], who addressed herself to him, spoke to him in a whisper of Odette... in that distant time, he had divined an element of suffering in its smile, in its limpid and disillusioned intonation, to-night he found there rather the charm of a resignation that was almost gay. Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken to him then... it seemed to say to him... ‘What does all that matter; it is all nothing.’ And Swann’s thoughts were borne for the first time on a wave of pity and tenderness towards that Vinteuil, toward that unknown, exalted brother who also must have suffered so greatly; what could his life have been? From the depths of what well of sorrow could he have drawn that god-like strength, that unlimited power of creation?
“...But ever since, more than a year before, discovering to him many of the riches of his own soul, the love of music had been born, and for a time at least had dwelt in him, Swann had regarded musical motifs as actual ideas, of another world, of another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable by the human mind, which none the less were perfectly distinct one form another... Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dreams of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.”
...
P270 “From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realized now...”
P272 “Sometimes he hoped that she would die, painlessly, in some accident... And Swann felt a very cordial sympathy with that Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he admired, who, on finding that he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed her, in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly relates, to recover his spiritual freedom. Then he would be ashamed of thinking thus only of himself, and his own sufferings would seem to deserve no pity now that he himself was disposing so cheaply of Odette’s very life.”
I had forgotten about this. We shall learn in time that even her death wouldn’t really have helped much. And now we are at the end. Marked by Swann pursuing Mme. de Cambremer to Combray. But before we move on we get one last memorable line,
P292 “‘To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style!’”
I rather suspect that this is not at all unusual. My parting thought about Swann is, "What did he understand courtesans to do?" His naiveté about Odette is rather puzzling.
Day 71 - On my off-day hike today I was thinking about what has surprised me about this period in quarantine. I knew I would miss my favorite cafes, in the last week or so before we went into lockdown I tried to hit as many of them as I could. But what I wouldn’t have predicted is that I haven’t had a drop of either alcohol or iced tea for over 70 days. Also fewer cookies and sweets, though that is mostly because there isn’t much available to me where I’m shopping.
That makes it sounds like I’m eating better, but I don’t think that is true. Normally I eat a lot of salad and I’ve been reluctant to order salad these days. I think I’ve had a total of six salads where I would normally have three or so a week. I’ve been eating more frozen dinners -- but veggie and often organic ones. Not terrible but not the best thing to eat. And a lot more bread than I usually consume. And cheese.
This is also the Memorial Day weekend. There are never any greening events on Memorial Day, I think because so many people are usually out of town. Not this year. And the weather couldn’t be better. As luck would have it, we are just about to go over 100,000 COVID-19 related known deaths. It would be too perfect if we hit that milestone on Memorial Day. Though the numbers are almost certainly too low, so the reality is that we are already way over 100,000 deaths compared with the same period of 2019. If we continue at this rate, which seems reasonable to assume, then we could have another 150,000 deaths by the end of October. Sadly, what people seem to be more concerned with just now is a shortage of hamburger and bacon since slaughterhouses turn out to be good places for a virus to spread. Not one of my concerns.
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It is now day 53 of Shelter In Place. I have a satisfactory routine. I’m still having to do HOA things, with another intense round of documents needing to go out as soon as I can get a signed copy returned to me. I still have a couple things to do around the house, but I’m mostly caught up. Of the things I’ve yet to do, many are in that class of things I would previously have done at a cafe table with a glass of iced tea at my side. Sitting down and doing them at home is doubly tedious.
I’m adopting a Stoic approach to the pandemic. This is our new path so we may as well make the most of it. The environmental benefits are worth the personal inconveniences, so far. I now wish I had bought a few of the better respirators back in the fall of 2018, but really I’m fortunate to have any n95s at all. I think having a quality respirator will become increasingly important over the next several months as the disease expands to places, like San Francisco, where it has been mostly blocked so far. Worst case, I may have to switch to delivery rather than pickup for my food and other essential needs. But every month travel is curtailed will be worth the inconvenience.
It struck me just today how curious it is that this Administration, together with a sizable percentage of the populace, is satisfied to have around 2,000 random Americans dying each day. When you consider the comparatively modest pretext for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it makes you think perhaps we could have saved ourselves a lot of money and trouble. Will this serve as a vaccine against future revenge wars? Maybe not since the other thing we’re seeing in abundance is stupidity. Fools can always be played. Something I don’t know if anyone really anticipated is how popular disaster is. The end of the world as we know it is getting great ratings. Everyone wants to watch. Not me, but everyone else seems to be tuning in.
Swann In Love 3
What do I think of Charles Swann? We first saw him from the perspective of Marcel’s parents and grandparents who see him as a respectable middle-class man who has gone astray in his domestic arrangements. Now we are seeing him in the thick of his affair with Odette and also as a not-enthusiastic-enough member of the Verdurins’ “little clan.” We’ve heard hints of his life in society but haven’t seen any of that yet, we haven’t even met the duke.
As memory serves, he will turn out to be as disloyal to his society friends as he is seen to be to his Verdurin friends, and he’s not satisfied to stick with the middle-class society he was born into. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he ends up having to cobble together still another phase of society that is willing to come to his home after his marriage. One wants to like him for his taste and education and for his role as family friend, but with reservations.
Here’s a perfect example of what I find problematic about Swann’s behavior, and since this involves the Princesse des Laumes, it is worth remembering for what comes much later.
P207 “After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so abruptly -- especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the ‘faithful’ before their normal time -- that on one occasion the Princesse des Laumes (at whose house dinner had been so late that Swann had left before the coffee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the Bois) observed:
‘Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might be some excuse for his running away like that. He seems to look upon us all as a joke.’”
Day 58 of pandemic Shelter-in-Place. And I’ve now missed three of my usual greening events. All four days of Cherry Blossom Festival, Dutch King Day, and the International Book Fair in Berkeley. The Book Fair is a recent addition, taking the place of either the Maker Faire in San Mateo or the Himalayan Fair in Berkeley. Really I’ll do anything to avoid working the Bay 2 Breakers race.
But Dutch King Day is one of our oldest events. We’ve been doing it so long both the gender and the location have changed, but it is still just as orange. Back when it was Dutch Queen Day, it was on the northern side of Golden Gate Park by the other windmill. It moved to the site of the southern windmill after the Netherlands helped to restore it from it’s ruined state. I actually like the new site better, the garden isn’t as pretty, but the site is more compact and easier for us to work. We don’t even use dumpsters for this one, all the trash gets bagged and hauled away in our truck. This also gives us more control over where the compost and recycling goes -- occasionally our carefully sorted trash gets mistakenly treated as landfill. We don’t like to think about that.
I can’t mention Dutch Queen Day without repeating one of my favorite greening-in-Golden-Gate-Park stories. It may have been the first year we worked the event when it was still by the north windmill. We were packing up at the end, loading trash and containers and signs into big trash toters and rolling them back to our truck. To save trips I always over-load my toters so they are nearly impossible to move (I’ve gotten a little better about this in recent years). At one point I left the toter in the middle of the street while I went to collect something else, and the wind was so fierce that it actually started blowing the toter down the street.
Swann first realizes that he has fallen out of favor with the Verdurins,
P220 “ ‘God knows that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to teach her to breathe a nobler and a purer air. But human patience has its limits, and mine is at an end,’ he concluded, as though this sacred mission to tear Odette away from an atmosphere of sarcasms dated from longer than a few minutes ago, as though he had not undertaken it only since it had occurred to him that those sarcasms might, perchance, be directed at himself, and might have the effect of detaching Odette from him.”
...
P221 “In a word, the life which they led at the Verdurins’, which he had so often described as ‘genuine,’ seemed to him now the worst possible form of life, and the ‘little nucleus’ the most degraded class of society... ”
...
“...no sooner had he closed the front-door behind him than he suddenly struck his forehead, and, making his servant open the door again, dashed out into the street shouting... ‘I believe I have found a way of getting invited to the diner at Chatou to-morrow!’ But it must have been a bad way, for M. Swann was not invited...”
And so we are at last past the Verdurins... at least for now. And now we move on to the part where, as it were, Swann’s Way and the Guermantes’ Way begin to blend.
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“I dreamed music”
That’s a favorite line from Blade Runner, but I really did just dream music. I’m up in the middle of the night so I don’t lose it (2:40am). It was live and I was there but it wasn’t a normal venue. There were scattered musicians, a few strings and an instrument I couldn’t identify, above me where I could hear but not see them. And they were playing Procol Harum's “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” But not all at once. In bits and pieces. I was trying to get them to quicken the tempo as it was obvious to me that that would sound even better, but they weren’t paying attention. I was also, in my dream, trying to fall asleep, but after the violin did such a beautiful job with it’s part and then the other instrument took over I just thought, “screw falling asleep, this is too good to miss,” and then I woke up.
A couple months ago I ran into a fairly recent, live performance of the song [the Hammond organ really makes this work] by some of the band members and a symphony orchestra. It was surprisingly good, but really just a richer version of the original, and with the same lead vocal. YouTube being what it is, I then searched around and found something similar for “Nights in White Satin.” But in my dream “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was purely instrumental and not at all like the original.
Swann in Love - continued
The plot thickens, or, this is a French novel, after all,
P166 “But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette feel (by consenting to meet her only after diner) that there were other pleasures which he preferred to that of her company, then the desire that she felt for his would be all the longer in reaching the point of satiety. Besides, as he infinitely preferred to Odette’s style of beauty that of a little working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with which he happened to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the first part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never allow Odette to call for him at his house, to take him on to the Verdurins’. The little girl used to wait, not far from his door, at a street corner; Remi, his coachman, knew where to stop; she would jump in beside him, and hold him in her arms until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins’... [Mme. Verdurin] sent him to the place kept for him, by the side of Odette, the pianist would play for them -- for their two selves, and for no one else -- that little phrase by Venteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of their love... It passed, with simple and immortal movements, scattering on every side the bounties of its grace, smiling ineffably still; but Swann thought that he could now discern in it some disenchantment. It seemed to be aware of how vain, how hollow was the happiness to which it shewed the way. In its airy grace there was, in deed, something definitely achieved, and completed in itself, like the mood of philosophic detachment which follows an outburst of vain regret. But little did that matter to him; he looked upon the sonata less in its own light -- as what it might express, had, in fact, expressed to a certain musician, ignorant that any Swann or Odette, anywhere in the world, existed, when he composed it, and would express to all those who should hear it played in centuries to come -- than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time, of himself -- which bound her to him by a lasting tie... He went further; agonized by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him... that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves...”
Marcel wants to play this his way, but, to be fair to Swann, his time spent with his “little girl” on the side also reduced the time he must pass in the company of the Verdurins’ “little clan.” I would think that in itself would be a powerful incentive.
This affair starts out, if I read the characters correctly, as a business proposition on Odette’s part that meets with only limited success at the beginning. Swann is interested in a way, but not entirely sold on the goods.
P173 “But one evening, when, irritated by the thought of that inevitable dark drive together [home with Odette], he had taken his other ‘little girl’ all the way to the Bois, so as to delay as long as possible the moment of his appearance at the Verdurins’, he was so late in reaching them that Odette, supposing that he didn’t intend to come, had already left. Seeing the room bare of her, Swann felt his heart wrung by sudden anguish; he shook with the sense that he was being deprived of a pleasure whose intensity he began then for the first time to estimate, having always, hitherto, had that certainty of finding it whenever he would...”
It’s now day 51 of the pandemic lock-down, by my count, and SF is still stuck on 29 official deaths. Official deaths for the nation are nearing 70,000 but the best guess is that the real total is double that based on excess deaths over last year. This may include people who didn’t have COVID-19 but either couldn’t receive or didn’t even seek proper treatment because of the pandemic, so the virus is at least a contributing cause of their deaths.
I’m now starting to run out of things I thought I was well supplied with, like the infamous TP but also quarters for the laundry. Since I’m now only going to the bathroom at home, I’m using more TP than normal. And my problem is that I don’t have room for the huge packages of TP that seem to be so popular. I only recently bumped up to buying six rolls instead of four. I have nowhere to store twelve rolls. So this week I’m going to have to go to the bank and find a store that sells TP in smaller bundles.
On the other hand, our weather is getting nicer. This week is supposed to be the warmest yet with no more rain even hinted at. We do need the rain, but it’s now so late in the season that we’re not likely to get more than a token amount. May moisture usually comes in the form of heavy mists that thwart even umbrellas. We can’t expect to see actual rain again until the fall. Normally, one would know what to expect from the coming summer and fall, and weather-wise, we still more or less do, but everything else is now in flux. I have no reason to think California will be back to anything like normal when the next rainy season starts. We are truly living in interesting times. I do expect the true COVID death toll to be over 200,000 by that time. And it could be even worse than that.
Since I’ve already begun by talking about TP use, I may as well go on to talk about what else has changed. Over the decades I’ve discovered a lazy-bachelor approach to housekeeping that works for me. I would rinse my dishes as I use them -- to deter insects -- but not actually wash them until I ran out of something important like sharp knives or plates that fit in the microwave. Now I do the dishes daily, or near enough. On the other hand I’m doing my laundry less often as, previously, it was my gym clothes that I would tend to run out of after about seven days. I haven’t touched my gym gear in over 51 days, and I even bought some new underwear online as I was running out of those first, so now I can go over a week before I need to do the laundry.
Because I’m doing more exercises and stretches at home now, and more often as well, I’m also doing a better job of keeping my floors swept. And I’ve gotten much better about not wearing shoes in the house. I should be cleaning the bathroom even more frequently, but I am cleaning it at least once a week, which is more than before. At other times I would be envying Marcel, Hans, and Henry’s access to domestic staff, but now you would have to also think of them as disease vectors.
I’ve been thinking about French toast for about a week now and plan to make some soon. (What is “French toast” called in France? One wonders.) I’ve been eating many more sandwiches and frozen dishes than normal. My justification for this is that it allows me to save my usual soups and things for my emergency reserve -- for if I catch the virus and need to keep myself going with as little trouble as possible. So my usual staples are the things I haven’t touched. Which is odd.
P182 Swann and Odette are finally lovers, “...For Swann was finding in things once more, since he had fallen in love, the charm that he had found when, in his adolescence, he had fancied himself an artist; with this difference, that what charm lay in them now was conferred by Odette alone. He could feel reawakening in himself the inspirations of his boyhood, which had been dissipated among the frivolities of his later life, but they all bore, now, the reflection, the stamp of a particular being; and during the long hours which he now found a subtle pleasure in spending at home, alone with his convalescent spirit, he became gradually himself again, but himself in thraldom to another.”
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Day 44 of the COVID-19 Shelter-In-Place and I’m still well. So far as I can tell. I’d like to think I’m one of the people who have had it without symptoms, but that seems unlikely. According to the latest figures I’ve seen, there have been fewer than 10 cases in my zipcode (and no deaths) and I’ve been probably 90% as good as I could be at social distancing. It’s only when I feel odd for a moment that I dwell on that 10% where I could have been even stricter, since this doesn’t seem to be a fun disease to get.
I’m going out even less than I was at first and I even have cut back just a little on my outdoor exercise routine. This was the first weekend I haven’t had take-away restaurant food because I had some other menu things going on and would have ended up with stale sourdough bread and other food waste. Still eagerly anticipating my postponed treat. And SF is still only up to 22 known dead. And are those 22 fatalities more tragic in being the few dead of what could have been a much worse butcher’s bill? The odds of dying here are almost lotto bad, but that has never stopped anyone from imagining the worst (or best).
Speaking of the lotto, the reason I used to occasionally play was that I thought it was instructive to consider what you would do differently if you won a big payout. I had various plans depending on the size of the payout. But now, there’s very little winning a bunch of money would help with and in many ways it would only add to your risks. If I still played, I would stop for the moment.
It always amazes me to think how little the best educated person knew about the world at the end of the 19th century. You could have spent your life going from one university to another learning from the most brilliant minds of the time, but when it comes to physics (and consequently chemistry) and astrophysics in particular, your ignorance would have been profound. Most of what you thought you knew about atoms and outer space was simply wrong. The 20th century was when humans finally got a clue about where they were and what they were made of. From our perspective there’s very little difference between the understanding of the most sophisticated Parisian of the 19th century and the most primitive savage at that time. And from our perspective their differences in personal dress and manners would be equally strange.
Today is day 46 of Sheltering In Place which I realized means that I’ve gone without a drop of tea (I don’t drink coffee) or alcohol for that whole time. My last iced tea was at my last breakfast out, the day before we went to SIP. Can’t say I feel that different. I may have more of a tendency to fall asleep during the day, but that could also be because there’s nothing very exciting happening and I’m sitting around the house so much. You’d think stopping something I did on such a regular basis, drinking iced tea, would have had some effect, but I wasn’t really even aware of it until I saw something about a couple who are avoiding caffeine during SIP. They were having more of a problem, but they were also used to a lot more caffeine than I am normally exposed to.
Today was an unusually social day. I had to let a couple contractors into the building and I stayed with them to answer questions as they looked at the work that needs to be done. We were all wearing n95 masks, but it was still the most I’ve been around anyone in 46 days. And then I had to buy a light bulb at the hardware store and was around still more people. And they weren’t wearing masks, though I was. I am tempted to ask people not wearing masks why? I doubt, however, that the young woman behind the counter at the hardware store would say it was because she’s quite pretty and the mask hides some of that, though I think that is at least part of it.
Swann's Way - Swann in Love
While introducing, at greater length, Swann and also Odette de Crecy and the beginning of their affair,
P149 “...Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines... for us to remember all that follows. And if she begins in the middle, where it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one another only, we are well enough attuned to that music to be able to take it up and follow our partner, without hesitation, at the first pause in her voice.”
I had forgotten that he uses music in this way as well. Though really it’s the same way. And I had forgotten that it was Odette who initiated the relationship.
Reading these opening pages I can certainly see why Charles Haas would have taken exception to being linked to Swann.
Today I read in the newspaper that people of my vintage should plan on hiding indoors for the next year or two until the virus storm abates... or until I catch it. While I try to look at this sentence from Marcel’s perspective (rather than from that of Hans Castorp or Henry Ryecroft) it is still rather daunting. I’m doing a reasonably good job of staying fit and eating well. I’m keeping myself amused. But in your late sixties you have to wonder how many “good” years you have left. To spend so much time in virtual house arrest (with walks) seems like giving up a lot. On the other hand, the accounts I read of people with even a moderate case of COVID-19 does not make me want to gain my freedom that way... and even that freedom is still in question.
Today is day 47 of SIP by my count. The USA has over 60,000 deaths from the virus, but this is probably a massive undercount. According to something I saw in the NYT, NYC alone has experienced 60,000 more deaths this year than last. The ratio is probably not as bad in places that have not been hit as hard, but even we have some deaths that were not diagnosed but are probably COVID-19 related. And now people and governments are starting to cut back on the social distancing.
This is necessary to some extent, but only some curves have flattened and there are still many known and many more unknown active cases walking around. It will be interesting to see what the curves look like a month from now. How many other places will look like the NYC area then?
The problem with living with so many books is that, at times like this when one has some time on one’s hands, it is so tempted to put off what you were going to do and pick up an old friend. My eye happened to fall on Wilt by Sharpe, which always makes me smile. There are some scenes in that novel that always make me laugh no matter how often I read them. Like the exhumation of the anatomically correct doll. And on my shelf it stands only a few volumes away from Anna Karenina, is there any humor in that book? I can’t recall any. If there is any it would involve Anna or her brother early in the book.
I have made it to the scene where Swann discovers, or rediscovers, the “little phrase” on his first visit to the Verdurin’s salon. I really dislike these characters, but there’s some important lines here about art. (It doesn’t help that I remember the cruel twist at the end of the work that requires the death of both M. Verdurin and the Princesse de Guermantes.)
P159 “A year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin. At first he appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keep pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony -- he knew not which -- that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils... And so, hardly had the delicious sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript... when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the strength of its expression; he had before him the definite object which was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought, and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he had never dreamed, into which he felt nothing but this phrase could initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and strange desire.
P160 “With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him here, there, everywhere, towards a state of happiness, noble, unintelligible, yet clearly indicated. And then, suddenly having reached a certain point from which he was prepared to follow it, after pausing a moment, abruptly it changed its direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, multiform, melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards a vista of joys unknown. Then it vanished. He hoped, with a passionate longing, that he might find it again, a third time. And reappear it did, though without speaking to him more clearly, bringing him, indeed, a pleasure less profound. But when he was once more at home he needed it, he was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows nothing of her, not even her name.”
This incident precipitates a sort of mid-life crisis for Swann, but he is not able to track down the piece of music. Until now,
P162 “...scarcely had the little pianist begun to play when, suddenly, after a high note held on through two whole bars, Swann saw it approaching, stealing forth from underneath that resonance, which was prolonged and stretched out over it, like a curtain of sound, to veil the mystery of its birth -- and recognized, secret, whispering, articulate, the airy and fragrant phrase that he had loved... Finally the phrase withdrew and vanished... But now, at last, he could ask the name of his fair unknown (and was told that it was the andante movement of Vinteuil’s sonata for the piano and violin), he held it safe, could have it again to himself, at home, as often as he would, could study its language and acquire its secret.
“...Then he asked for some information about this Vinteuil; what else had he done, and at what period in his life he had composed the sonata; -- what meaning the little phrase could have had for him, that was what Swann most wanted to know.
“But none of these people who professed to admire this musician... seemed ever to have asked himself these questions, for none of them was able to reply...”
And now we stretch beyond music to art in general, and the appreciation of art,
“Inasmuch as the public cannot recognize the charm, the beauty, even the outline of nature save in the stereotyped impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated, while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions, so M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were incapable of finding, either in Vinteuil’s sonata or in Biche’s portraits, what constituted harmony, for them, in music or beauty in painting. [In a past blog this was described as consonance and contrasted with the dissonance of these artists.] It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colors haphazard upon his canvas...”
P163 “Swann discovered no more than that the recent publication of Vinteuil’s sonata had caused a stir among the most advanced school of musicians, but that it was still unknown to the general public.
“‘I know some one, quite well, called Vinteuil,’ said Swann, thinking of the old music-master at Combray who had taught my grandmother’s sisters.
“‘Perhaps that’s the man!’ cried Mme. Verdurin.
“‘Oh, no!’ Swann burst out laughing. ‘If you had ever seen him for a moment you wouldn’t put the question.’”
...
P164 “‘But it may well be some relative,’ Swann went on. ‘That would be bad enough; but, after all, there is no reason why a genius shouldn’t have a cousin who is a silly old fool...’”
Link to Table of Contents
The foods I miss the most while sheltering in place and mostly preparing my own meals:
Veggie burrito with avocado and green salsa from Cancun
Veggie deli sandwich from Roxie Food Center
Blueberry pancakes with butter and syrup from Olympic Flame Cafe
My usual Indian meal at Udupi Palace
Vegan Delight breakfast with a biscuit and iced tea at The Pork Store
Combray 3
I stopped last time just before one of my favorite passages/scenes in the entire work. Here it is now, the passage that I should like to show to Jane Austen,
P100 “...it was Legrandin himself who, without the least suspicion... walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when we met him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne.
“‘There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?’ He said to my father. ‘Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a cineraria blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky... Nowhere, perhaps, except on the shores of the English Channel, where Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able to find such copious examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom in the clouds. Down there, close to Balbec, among all those places which are still so uncivilized, there is a little bay... In that bay... the golden sands appear more charming still from being fastened like fair Andromeda, to those terrible rocks of the surrounding coast... Balbec! The oldest bone in the geological skeleton that underlies our soil... the land’s end, the accursed region which Anatole France -- an enchanter whose works our young friend ought to read -- has so well depicted... how delightful it is, down there. To be able to step out at once into regions so primitive and so entrancing.’
“‘Indeed! And do you know anyone at Balbec?’ inquired my father. ‘This young man is just going to spend a couple of months there with his grandmother, and my wife too, perhaps.’
“Legrandin, taken unawares by the question at a moment when he was looking directly at my father, was unable to turn aside his gaze, and so concentrated it with steadily increasing intensity -- smiling mournfully the while -- upon the eyes of his questioner, with an air of friendliness and frankness and of not being afraid to look him in the face, until be seemed to have penetrated my father’s skull... and to be seeing, at the moment, a long way beyond and behind it, a brightly coloured cloud, which provided him with a mental alibi, and would enable him to establish the theory that, just when he was being asked whether he knew anyone at Balbec, he had been thinking of something else, and so had not heard the question. As a rule these tactics make the questioner proceed to ask, ‘Why, what are you thinking about?’ But my father, inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: ‘Have you friends, then in that neighborhood, that you know Balbec so well?’
P101 “In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled to the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and distraction; then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it now but to answer, he said to us: ‘’I have friends all the world over, wherever there are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated, which have come together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic obstinacy, to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them.’
‘That is not quite what I meant,’ interrupted my father, obstinate as a tree and merciless as the sky. ‘I asked you, in case anything should happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any people.’
‘There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one,’ replied Legrandin, who was by no means ready to surrender... That land which knows not truth,’ he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, ‘that land of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy, and is certainly not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive its impressions... Believe me’ he went on with emphasis, ‘the waters of that bay -- more Breton than Norman -- may exert a sedative influence, though even that is of questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no longer unbroken... But at your age, my boy, those waters are contra-indicated. . . . Good night to you, neighbours,’ he added, moving away from us with that evasive abruptness to which we were accustomed; and then, turning toward us, with a physicianly finger raised in warning, he resumed the consultation: ‘No Balbec before you are fifty!’ he called out to me, ‘and even then it must depend on the state of the heart.’
“My father spoke to him of it again, as often as we met him, and tortured him with questions, but it was a labour in vain... M. Legrandin, had we insisted further, would in the end have constructed a whole system of ethics, and a celestial geography of Lower Normandy, sooner that admit to us that, within a mile of Balbec, his own sister was living in her own house; sooner than find himself obliged to offer us a letter of introduction....”
Because I have a family history of skin cancer, and I tend to work out in the sun for eight hours a shift, often twice a week, I take a range of precautions. I use a good sunscreen on days when I work. I wear a special hat and sleeves that protect my skin from the sun. But my third layer of protection in recent years has been my hair. I’ve managed it so that it starts growing over my ears and the back of my neck when my greening season starts mid-April. And it was right where it should be. But now there is no greening work in my immediate future so yesterday I trimmed it back so as to be out of my way.
Under other circumstances, though under the other circumstances I wouldn’t need to trim it, I would have gone to my poor barber and had her do the trimming. As it is I see her once a year. And if I hadn’t been going to her for over thirty years, she probably wouldn’t even remember me from one year to the next. Fortunately, my hair hasn’t changed much, except to become rather straighter than it once was. But I’ve frequently cut my own hair in the past and giving myself a trim at a time when virtually no one sees me, is not all that hard.
I keep hearing in the news about others of our usual events that have been cancelled. The Berkeley Book Fair was the most recent. And while I still would like to hope that the situation might change by September and October, it’s hard to imagine. And even if some of our events did return, it’s hard to imagine my working them unless I either gain immunity through getting it or a vaccine appears out of nowhere.
It has finally gotten warm again so I have a window open onto the garden next door. Thus my apartment’s soundscape is now dominated by the sound of a mourning dove. Fortunately, I like their often repeated tune. And nearly every morning I have to chase out a bee that has somehow slipped in my closed sash style windows. The bush right outside my window is covered in small flowers... though that probably gives too attractive an image. These “flowers” are useful to the bush and to the bees, but that’s all that can be said for them.
Young Marcel sees Gilberte for the first time, but what I find more interesting is the introduction of the Baron.
P109 “‘Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?’ called out in a piercing tone of authority a lady in white [Odette], whom I had not seen until that moment, while, a little way beyond her, a gentleman in a suit of linen ‘ducks,’ whom I did not know either [Charlus], stared at me with eyes which seemed to be starting from his head... ”
...
“...I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to do her some injury, to force her to keep some memory of me. I knew her to be so beautiful that I should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, ‘’I think you are hideous, grotesque; you are utterly disgusting!’...”
P115 “...For constantly, after meeting M. Vinteuil, he [Swann] would remember that he had been meaning for a long time to ask him about some one of the same name as himself, one of his relatives, Swann supposed. And on this occasion he determined that he would not forget what he had to say to him when M. Vinteuil should appear with his daughter at Tansonville.”
Which Vinteuil never does so I guess Swann does not learn that he is the composer of the “little phrase.” Though one can imagine Marcel informing him of this fact once Swann tells him his story. If I have that right.
P137 “...suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something which the invited me to approach and seize from them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there ... motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavoring to penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt... It was certainly not any impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them was associated with some material object devoid of intellectual value, and suggested no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in that way distracted me from the tedium, for the sense of my own impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for some great literary work...”
Shortly after this is the passage about the three church steeples roaming about, in perspective, on the horizon. I know how that works but I still don’t know what he’s getting at in talking about it. But, the passage above reminded me of something else as I was rereading it. One of my favorite passages in The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the one where Paloma has her Zen moment with the falling flower petal -- in the past I’ve called it satori but I see that kensho may be more appropriate, though that’s a term I don't recall hearing before. Young Marcel is trying too hard to grasp what his senses are suggesting to him. But if kensho is “flashes of the enlightened state” what is so enlightened about these rocks or roads or even the central madeleine experience?
Proust is not the philosopher of transcendence or satori or “fully awakening to your Buddha nature.” He is the prophet of this world, of fully appreciating maya. Devi went to a lot of trouble to dream all this up, and Marcel fully appreciates it. Or at least he tries. Whether it’s the hawthorn blossoms or a hat worn twenty years before, he discovers the divinity in the phenomena around us.
And that wraps up Combray, I’m almost sad to say, and clears the way for Swann In Love. And who does tell him this story? I thought it was Swann himself, when Marcel had insinuated himself in Swann’s house in pursuit of Gilberte and was then distracted by Odette.
Link to Table of Contents
Today I defrosted my freezer. I’ve been defrosting this particular freezer for 27 years now and yet I came up with a new refinement in my technique just this time -- I sponge out the water from as soon as there is any in the drip tray, rather then waiting until the end.
The refrigerator is actually a little larger than I need and I wouldn’t object to a frost-free machine, but this little machine just keeps on working so I find it hard to replace. And it would be a shame to let this defrosting skill set go to waste along with so many others. I’m only half kidding about that.
Day 35 of Shelter In Place and I made my first trip to a supermarket (Trader Joe’s). The last time I was there, shortly before SIP started, the shelves had been almost empty. Today the shelves were stocked, with a few exceptions, but the store was nearly deserted with only a few customers allowed in at a time, and a long, well spaced line in front and extending for almost a block down the side of the building. Took well over thirty minutes to get in the front door, but then everything went quickly. I usually only buy a bag of groceries at a time, but this time I filled two bags and limited myself to just the items I couldn’t get at my corner markets. (Forgot to get better potatoes because I didn’t write it on my list. Baked potatoes have become one of my staples.)
You can’t give them your reusable bags now, but I had the checker leave the heavy items in my basket and only bag the lighter, bulkier items. Then I took the basket outside and emptied it into my usual cloth bag. Aside from the potatoes and the fact that I was exposed to more people than I’ve seen in 35 days -- I had my n95 mask on -- it went as well as it could have. I suspect there will be new rules in a month when I need to return. But now I have my favorite hummus, trail mix, granola, and brown rice, not to mention a few of the other unexpected items you always add in when you’re browsing TJ’s.
Less than 10 “known” cases in my zipcode (zipcode with most cases has 171) and my zipcode covers more blocks than I knew. I have to say this makes me feel a little better. By no means does this means I’m in a virus free zone, but it certainly isn’t rampant here.
You can’t help wondering, every time you leave your house, if you’re making a big mistake. Sure, I’m taking “reasonable” precautions and I’m only going out for food and exercise; but I know other people my age are not going out at all. I’m doing a good job of keeping fit -- and I do live in a tiny apartment -- but if I were to come down with COVID-19 I would probably spend some time kicking myself for taking the risks I’m taking. I’m sure I would quickly fall back on “Good luck. Bad Luck. Who knows?” but in this particular case I would just as soon not learn anything from this path of illness.
April 22, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Seems like only yesterday. And we, and by “we” I mean the SARS-CoV-2 virus, have finally done something meaningful. The demand for oil is so reduced that if you had an empty oil tanker in the right location you could have oil companies pay you to take the oil off their hands. So of course thousands of Americans are protesting that they would rather die than live this way.
I covered the first Earth Day for my high school newspaper, which involved riding my 10 speed bike back and forth between Scottsdale and Arizona State University in Tempe collecting information and documentation. I would have to dig out my copy of that issue from storage, but I seem to recall I had the better part of a two page spread all to myself, The high point of my journalism career.
I think I had already sold my little Fiat, my first and last car, but I wouldn’t become a vegetarian for a couple more months. It still amazes me how few people have been motivated to change their habits by Earth Day and later Global Climate Change. The shared consensus seems to be that these are problems either the government or big business should address. Instead, it’s taken a virus to make a change.
Combray continued
Vinteuil and Swann
P86 “M. Vinteuil... had retired to the neighborhood of Combray, we used often to invite him to our house, but with his intense prudishness he had given up coming, so as not to be obliged to meet Swann, who had made what he called ‘a most unsuitable marriage, as seems to be the fashion these days.’”
This is a perfect example of something you can only appreciate when rereading. The “little phrase” in The Vinteuil Sonata plays a key role in Swann’s romance with Odette. I can’t recall if Swann’s passion for that music survives his passion for Odette, and Vinteuil is such an ass I doubt that Swann would regret missing his company at dinner, but it is still a shame.
P88 “Although Saturday... passed more slowly than the other days for my aunt, yet, the moment it was past... she would look forward with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all the novelty and distraction which her frail and disordered body was still able to endure. This was not to say... that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as... the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heart strings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearns to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel...”
It occurs to me, this reading, that much of this about his “aunt” must really be about the author.
“...She was genuinely fond of us; she would have enjoyed the long luxury of weeping for our untimely decease; coming at a moment when she felt ‘well’ and was not in a perspiration, the news that the house was being destroyed by a fire, in which all the rest of us had already perished, a fire which, in a little while, would leave not one stone standing upon another, but from which she herself would still have plenty of time to escape without undue haste... must often have haunted her dreams, as a prospect which combined with the two minor advantages of letting her taste the full savour of her affection for us in long years of mourning, and of causing universal stupefaction in the village when she should sally forth to conduct our obsequies, crushed but courageous, moribund but erect, the paramount and priceless boon of forcing her at the right moment... to go off and spend the summer at her charming farm of Mirougrain, where there was a waterfall...”
Link to Table of Contents
Swann’s Way
Combray
I just realized I’m even starting this at the right time of the year. This was when Marcel’s family would arrive from Paris.
While walking today it occurred to me that if a taste or smell were likely to restore to me the house and situation of my Alabama aunt, it would almost certainly be the smell that came from the air conditioner in my uncle’s Lincoln Continental. This was a fancy car, electric window controls and the like, but it had seen better days and the smell produced by the air conditioner was powerful. The kind of smell that makes you wonder how safe it really was to breath the air. This would have been around 1960, give or take a few years.
I’ve had another “madeleine” moment. Well, a hint of one. Since I started sheltering-in-place I’ve been making myself peanut butter and honey sandwiches on a regular basis. Something I rarely do. And this has reminded me of something I had almost forgotten about. My freshman year at university my main activity, outside class, was working for the local war resistance group. Mostly I counseled guys my age who didn’t want to go to Vietnam. We also organized protests in town and on campus. But our most frequent activity was running a lunch program in a church a block off campus. Every day I would walk or bike over there and join the crew preparing lunch for people. All I remember making was peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
It’s likely that by the time I stopped doing that I had had more than enough PB&H sandwiches for most of my life. Only now, fifty years later, am I returning to that easy lunch option for vegetarians. But now I think about it, I think there were also some quite delicious bean and rice dishes I recall having for Thanksgiving, probably that same year.
P37 “My grandfather’s cousin -- by courtesy my great-aunt -- with whom we used to stay, was the mother of that aunt Leonie who, since her husband’s (my uncle Octave’s) death, had gradually declined to leave, first Combray, then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed; and who now never ‘came down,’ but lay perpetually in an indefinite condition of grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions, and religious observances... The air of those rooms was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings, chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more fully... I would turn to and fro between the prayer-desk and the stamped velvet armchairs... while the fire, baking like a pie the appetizing smells with which the air of the room was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had already ‘raised’ and started to ‘set,’ puffed them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered quilt.”
And that, in case you didn’t know, is the sort of book this is. And still talking about aunt Leonie (though maybe not only aunt Leonie),
P38 “...in the life of complete inertia which she lead she attached to the least of her sensations an extraordinary importance, endowing them with a Protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to keep them secret, and, failing a confident to whom she might communicate them, she used to promulgate them to herself in an unceasing monologue which was her sole form of activity...”
The first mention of the character Bergotte. I find he is linked to both John Ruskin and Anatole France. Ruskin would seem to be of more interest to Ford Madox Ford, but Anatole France certainly makes sense. And Swann all but dooms Marcel to fall in love with his daughter by describing her friendship with Bergotte, who is a friend of the family. As we shall see in time. And this is said about Bergotte and philosophy,
P73 “...I cherished his philosophy, and had pledged myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach the age when I should be eligible to attend the class at school called ‘Philosophy.’ I did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but simply exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and, if I had been told that the metaphysicians whom I was actually to follow there resembled him in nothing, I would have been struck down by the despair a young lover feels... when a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.”
P78 I tend to forget that the village church at Combray is also where the Guermantes are buried and where young Marcel first sees the Duc de Guermantes and his Duchesse. And Marcel laughs at his grandmother (Mme. Amédée) along with the rest of the family when she asserts that her school friend, Mme. de Villeparisis is related to the Guermantes.
We are now in day 34 of Social Distancing and San Francisco is finally up to twenty known deaths from COVID-19. We have certainly succeeded in “flattening” the curve, which unfortunately also means we are almost as vulnerable as before to fresh exposure when people return to town. And our tourist economy makes this even worse. As long as the virus is a problem anywhere there will be people there wanting to bring it here.
I for one, am eating very well this weekend. I ordered a bunch of dishes from a local Burmese restaurant -- my favorite place is on the other side of town -- and am slowly heating them up and adding my own bread or brown rice. Curiously, this place lists cheesecake as one of their specialties, so I gave it a try... they weren’t kidding. One of the best I’ve ever had, not counting the kind with chocolate swirled in with the cheese. But for a simple cheesecake it is perfect.
I have now received four weeks of unemployment, even less per week now that I asked them to withhold taxes from the payments, but I also received the $1,200 “stimulus” payment from the government that is intended to get the economy restarted again. How? I’m incredibly fortunate in that my income, excluding my seasonal work, just about matches my expenses. My Unemployment Payments are ridiculously small they average my usual income over twelve months rather than six. I will be short at the end of the year, but that’s mostly because of some unexpected things I’ve had to pay for related to my building.
My point is, I don’t need the $1,200 to survive so I could rush out and spend it, but then what’s open? I admit I’m tempted to replace my infuriatingly slow Windows laptop with a better machine. One with a generation of microprocessor that doesn’t have a flawed security design. Under other circumstances I would take the bus down to Best Buy and shop for such a machine, but today they won’t let you in the building. And all the ads are amazingly blind to the whole security problem. You’d think the machines with new chips would be announcing that fact but it seems like everyone had decided to downplay the chip issue since they are all still trying to sell machines with the bad chips. I’m going to have to do all my own research and then track down a likely machine. Am I then going to go to the trouble of dealing with a local business? Maybe, but maybe not. And how much good does my buying a new laptop do the national economy?
I would love to go on a restaurant binge. Eat really well and over-tip right and left -- and I probably will do this to the extent that I can -- but most of the places I would usually go are closed or too remote at the moment. And I’m tempted to just use the $1,200 to make up for some of the money I hadn’t planned on spending on the building. So some or all of it will probably just go to savings. Though this is s stupid time to save when the government seems determined to inflate the currency.
The other option, and this is the other thing I probably will do, is give a portion of the “stimulus” funds to charities that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to support this year with my reduced income. And I can do that now rather than at the end of the year, when I usually give.
I’m glad we had this chat.
