blue lagoon

this is a tiny book i made of my mom scraps and poems-- i may be the baby in the poem on the left! and she may be the little kid on the right-- im not sure-- that was her house... click to see 

excerpt from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust :

And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M. Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which constituted, all by itself, the tapering 'elevation' of an irregular pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom, with the little passage through whose glazed door Mamma would enter; in a word, seen always at the same evening hour, isolated from all its possible surroundings, detached and solitary against its shadowy background, the bare minimum of scenery necessary (like the setting one sees printed at the head of an old play, for its performance in the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at night. I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by an exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the pictures which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead.

Permanently dead? Very possibly.

There is a large element of hazard in these matters, and a second hazard, that of our own death, often prevents us from awaiting for any length of time the favours of the first.

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

I admit that my long visits to the basements and the sifting through lost artifacts is really not making the moon any less fuller-- or me any less loony for that matter! but thinking of my wolf like-sleep walking-ghostly  mother putting on the little post its onto each box full of old passed on heirlooms (emphasis on the looming part) each post it-- marked in her so careful cursive, "save for mark-- save for kate"--- willing me to find these items someday

-- each familiar object in a sea of mostly unfamiliar is like an odd tiny note sticking out inside a music box-- and somehow i can enter back into the house which at the time was so terrifying and put these pieces together there in my memory and it is so calm when there is no human phantom left-- it is like the week after her passing -- back and drowning in an ocean floor of endless markers of time and place that cannot helped but be pushed around by the sea! 

now i realize that my lamp on my night table is the one from her house-- my funny television which we would watch somehow feeling safer then because we could be monitored by the less dimensional sort -- it was hers too--- so many objects which i take to for whatever reason-- it is too late at night and in general to know -- but at least i do remember the times in the bath-- and asking about all the strange scars -- and seeing the severity of the scoliosis and the uneven legs -- and her schizophrenic total loss of connection with this mass and weight of being real -- in the calm tepid water --i can understand that there is a clear difference between us despite our similar gravities--- i do not suffer this disconnect and i do not mind the bruises after falling --- the monthly lady days which she blamed for her departure in her final note! and if laughing makes me ooze funny tears and blush with embarrassment--that break of relief-- is worth the bruises really-- the relief! its a human not phantom treasure! the most frightening ailments are somehow parallel to cold fronts and tornados and blizzards-- and its not so bad to see out of two little eyes that are so blurry -- it isnt!

i really dont mind

and at least i have her sense of humor-- and i really dont mind that it is so painfully funny!