Proust

The laws of memory are subject to the more general laws of habit. Life is mostly habit. The characters become victims of time. The relationship with Albertine is volcanic: "One only loves that which is not possessed, one only loves that in which pursues the inaccessible." The token of a monopoly. "My imagination provided equations for the unknown in this algebra of desire." What emerges (read Otto Rank, "The Double") is a double slavery that prevents any possible happiness. Stepping outside, to clear my head, the fox is at the compost heap, rooting through the gleanings from my fridge. She looks at me, over her shoulder, like a lover might (a trick of imagination) or one of Pegi's students perfecting a pose. She finds something she likes, turns and walks away, limping slightly, down the driveway; then veers off, on the path to the graveyard, where I know she dens. She carries part of my last failure, a piece of badly cured pork tenderloin. I usually cure whole loins, the tenderloin is so small as to not seem worth the effort, but I think a cured tenderloin might make an excellent breakfast meat, and I've started another one. Brined, then dried, and rubbed with a new mixture of brown sugar, a little salt (the last one was way to salty) and various dried peppers; in the fridge now, on a rack, in a pan to catch the liquid. I'm going to smoke this one, maybe 10 hours at 120 degrees, so it'll be fully cooked. The last one spoiled. The fox doesn't care about that, she and her kits have a different set of enzymes. Hot, bright, and still, outside; back inside, I start the window unit, make myself some eggs, scrambled with left-over stir-fry. In this new Barnes book of short stories, there's a number set of stories, spread among the others "At Phil and Joanna's" in which the 'story' is advanced completely in dialog. Good stuff. The reader is forced to develop a context from the text. George V. Higgins. The greatest writer of dialog ever. Can tell you an entire elaborate story embedded in the conversation of two low-level criminals, talking at a bar. The faculty of suffering. Brando playing the drums. Just saying. Watch where you put your bongo. Even after Albertine dies, the attachment is so strong the narrator swoons. A common enough situation, maybe universal, what makes Proust real for me. And I like his use of the comma. Life, like in Faulkner, is a run-on sentence. The cruelty of memory. He draws this in successive stages, like stations of the cross. Flaubert might have started this, where you focused on the real. I'm not a critic, I just read a lot. I have opinions. But isn't that a lot like what Joyce did later? What is a narrative anyway? Look at Emily, look at Virginia Wolfe, look at John Barth. As readers, we just pull together clues, try and make sense. Any omission is as important as anything included. Which leaves us with nothing but an opinion. Shifting sands. Not a decent foundation. Drawn into the swirl of the eddy, you either grab a floating something or you drown. Currents will take you down, or a knock on the head, a tow-boat pushing barges of coal upstream. Listen, I understand sense, what's made and what isn't. I knock up against it every day. I don't buy it, but I don't play by their rules. Both a conflict and a compromise. If I take their money I'd need to do what they think I'd do. It's confusing, really, what's expected. Thank God I have another day, before I have to face the world, I'd be embarrassed otherwise. Kate, and that whole confused history of Canada. I need a funny hat.