353. Swann's Way - Overture

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Swann’s Way

by Marcel Proust (translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff)
Random House - 1924-25

Overture

Since I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read this, I’m not entirely sure now if my deep interest in dreams and dreaming is something I have in common with Proust or if I caught this from him. My dreams are so much more interesting than my waking life that it really doesn’t bear thinking about. Hardly a night goes by when I don’t awaken, in the night or in the morning or even better after having fallen back asleep in the morning, and am astounded by the beauty and complexity, and sometimes just the strangeness, of my dreams. And here is something in particular that I know very well.

P5 “...for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilization, and out of a half-visualized succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego.”

I sleep in a very dark room and so often I will awaken with no idea where I am. That I was just the instant before “someplace” quite different doesn’t reduce the confusion. Usually there is some light from the streetlight outside that penetrates my closed shutters. And if it is morning, there is a hint of light from several directions. But it takes a moment for me to orient myself, not just in my room but in time and place. 

I do wonder how this works for a blind person. If it is early or late there might be sounds to tell me something, but between 1 and 3 am it is nearly silent here. Without the visual clue of light I would not know where to even look for a light or a door. Or for my glasses.

But memory does reassemble your identity over time. 

San Francisco April 8, 2020
We are now in the fifth week of Sheltering in Place or practicing Social Distancing. Today I went out and walked up and down a relatively level stretch of Pine street for thirty blocks. I didn’t interact with anyone so I didn’t wear my face mask. Probably tomorrow I will need to go to the post office so I will wear my mask for that excursion. The streets are mostly deserted and many of the stores are boarded up. It’s rather more dull than the post-apocalyptic fantasies we’ve seen in films. I have been busy this whole time with homeowners association business so I have been anything but bored. I am hoping to have more time on my hands later this week, but that’s what I thought last week as well.

What I miss are things that would not have meant much to Proust, social distancing in his cork lined room. I miss settling in at a cafe with my iced tea to work or read. I have not had a drop of iced tea, or alcohol, since this started. I miss seeing the usual faces at the cafes I frequent. I worry about the workers and the businesses.

On the other hand, I’m amazed at what the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been able to achieve in a matter of months. The Paris Agreement was a half measure that I never believed everyone would live up to, but this virus is taking care of business. I never thought we would willingly do what was necessary, but I did think it would be a global recession or depression that could make a difference, this is even more effective in that it is immobilizing even the wealthy. The cruise and tourism industry is not going to recover quickly from this. Which means the carbon reduction should last for some time. Will it be enough to make a difference? Is it already too late? I don’t know. 

Even when I can return to the cafes, my seasonal work at public events is going to be slow to return. And San Francisco will be hit hard economically. We are known for tech but its tourism that pays the bills.

But as far as the pandemic goes, we are doing remarkably well. Today we counted only our tenth death. So far (knock on wood) we’re getting only a death every few days. Though that could change quickly as there are already cases in the huge, city run nursing home and several cases in the homeless shelters. I don’t see how those two communities can avoid being consumed by the pandemic.

But the city as a whole went to sheltering in place early and it seems to be working. Also, I think a lot of people left town. I know four people in my building and another two or three across the alley went home to their families. Students and even some workers can work remotely from anywhere. I would love to know by how much the population of the city has dropped. 

I’m assembling lists of places I want to go (mostly foods I want to eat) as soon as things return to normal. But how many of my favorite places will survive? In many ways, this, especially if it goes on longer than two months, is going to be as bad as the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. It could take the better part of a decade for business to return to normal. All the more so if this is the start of the Trump Depression, which is quite possible.


Another day has passed with very little change. Yesterday 799 people died of COVID-19 just in NYC and there are now more cases in New York state than in any country besides the USA. No one seems to have handled the pandemic worse than New York. Our death count is still at 10. I realize that counting the weeks is confusing so I’m going to switch to a day count, starting with the day I and the City independently decided to embrace Social Distancing. This is then Day 23. So 23 days since I’ve been able to walk into a cafe, order some tea, and sit down to work. And I’m still refining my Social Distancing routine. I wear my N95 mask when I’m going to interact with someone at a market or bank or post office. And as of today, I’m wearing a cloth mask even when I go out for exercise. The latest word is that the six foot safety zone idea may not be good enough. So with a cloth mask I am preventing any viruses I may have -- there’s no way to know for sure if you have it -- from contaminating someone else as I huff and puff up my hill while giving me a similar degree of protection from anything in the air around me. Not perfect protection, but something.

When you think about it, and look at what’s happened around NYC and even in Singapore of late, it would seem to be a lost cause, yet the case count for San Francisco has gone from increasing around 70% every three days to the most recent count of 25%. That is a greatly flattened curve.


I’ve finished reading about young Marcel’s sad victory over his mother leading to a reading of parts of, but not all of, a novel by George Sand. In some ways I wish Proust had spent more time writing about his -- Marcel’s -- family than about the Guermantes. Though he does capture them and maybe more would not be better. And it’s really his grandmother that we see clearest. I’ve known women like her, and they can be exasperating, but she is also a lovely and good person.

Yesterday I paused at page 34, just before we come to the “petite madeleines.” It had been a long day of HOA related nonsense, check writing and taking the checks and other items to the post office for special service. I’m not going to read much now, but I want to keep moving forward. While I may regret saying this, I think I’m caught up for the moment so tomorrow I should have more time.

The last day has not been a good day for San Francisco during the pandemic. It was our first day with more than one death, in fact three deaths, and the number of cases went up 10%. That last isn’t a surprise as they are now doing more testing in the places where the destitute dwell and the results are about what you’d expect. People living in SROs or tents or in shelters are not going to be able to Social Distance even if they wanted to, and many have no real idea of what’s happening. And unless Meals on Wheels start delivering opiates and meth, they are not going to keep to themselves in any case.

Finally saw some death statistics comparing now with previous year. THIS is for NYC and it extends back to include 9/11. I hope someone at our local paper will see this so we can get similar statistics for San Francisco.

So here is the famous passage, as leaving it out really isn’t an option.

P34 “...mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory -- this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?”
...

P35 “...feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself... I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth...”

P36 “And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray... my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or lime-flower tea... But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

“And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind if for my parents... and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square... the country roads we took when it was fine... all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village... and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being. Town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.”


I wonder if Temple Grandin has read this and if so what she thought of it. If she can remember everything she’s ever seen, does she respond to smell and taste in the same way when it comes to memory? Presumably she would remember the details of a house where she had spent time as a child, but would smell take her back in a more immediate way?