What would Proust say?

So I took on this project a year ago today.  My goal was to write about a memory each day that is triggered during the day through some association (sound, smell, visual image, quotes, touch, etc.), a sort of writing exercise based on Marcel Proust’s genius description of involuntary memory  in Remembrance of Things Past (A la recherche du temps perdu). While some of my posts I’ve dug deep to find an associated memory with something from my day, there are other posts that are descriptions of involuntary memories that have erupted from the depths of my mind. Sometimes the trigger is unclear to my rationale but none the less it exists, even if unexplainable.

I can honestly say that this has been the best resolution I’ve made to myself.  It’s made me practice the art of writing again with some successful nights in finding a voice and other nights of struggle.  Some nights while writing I’ve sat here laughing to myself and other nights crying my eyes out. This project has encouraged me to pay attention to the pocket-size treasures of memories packed in sounds, smells and tastes we are often too much in a rush to recognize and enjoy.  I’ve also come to realize that perhaps the daily rush in which we absorb ourselves is in part a protective mechanism, shielding us from painful and unresolved memories.  Writing these posts has allowed me to connect with and often indirectly thank old friends by sending them the blog post in which I’ve written about them.  It’s encouraged me to work through emotions tied to memories I’d bottled up and avoided.   It has forced me to become more comfortable with putting my personal self “out there” despite parental reprimands (some of them deserving) for doing so. I now have almost 2 years of memories documented since it was an event each day (an often an “inbetween” moment)  that triggered a memory.  While my discipline waned on some days and  I thus have some days to fill in based on notes scribbled on post-it notes and my calendar, I can say that I am proud of this accomplishment.

I went back to my Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces I used during my humanities class in Strasbourg with Dr. K.  It was there in France during my sophomore study abroad that I read Proust for the first time.  Here is a passage from Remembrance of Things Past (specifically Swan’s Way) I had underlined then that resonates with this project:

“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

Tonguing the roof

“Become aware of the tension in your jaw.  Where is your tongue touching? Make sure your tongue is not at the roof of your mouth,” my yoga class instructor guided us at the beginning of class.  Of course my tongue was pressing on the roof of my mouth.  Why would I have come to yoga if I wasn’t in need of a little unwinding/destressing?  Guiding my conscious to where precisely my tongue touched, I had a flashback of a recent kiss.  It was my first experience with this kissing technique.  Somewhere early on in this snogging session I felt the tip of my friend’s tongue touching the roof of my mouth.  Interesting, I thought.  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to a) be turned on by this or b) assume he had an extraordinarily long tongue and be grateful it wasn’t going down my throat (as I recall a college boyfriend’s tongue reaching).  Was it peanut butter I had accidentally left on the roof of my mouth he was after?  Regardless, this made for a somewhat pleasurable and amusing association at the beginning of class and I’m quite sure I had a smirk on my face during that vinyassa.

TD

I had the opportunity to massage my father’s shoulders, back, neck, and arms this afternoon.  He may be my dad but he’s not invincible, I was reminded.  I could feel the stress related knots I was probably partially responsible for causing.  I suppose somehow this opportunity was more meaningful after attending the visitation for my childhood friend’s father yesterday.  Today I also received a message from an English friend telling me her father had just died this week.  What a gift I had to work on my father!

Somehow massage seems to both a) allow memories to rise to the surface and b) make some more talkative.  “Did I ever tell you about the time Uncle M (my dad’s “little” brother) spent most of the afternoon swimming on the bottom of the pool floor with a life jacket on? Grandma N (his mom) picked him up at the end of the day and noticed that it wasn’t that he was that good of a swimmer but rather his jacket was full of water,” dad told me.  I laughed, imagining how incidents like this must have made my Uncle M into the Fighting Illini football player he became. Funny, his mother, Grandma N, had similarly verbalized reflections during her massage.  She told me how she and her childhood friend Sally had worn the same wedding dress and how some 40 years later, her mom (my great grandmother) had rescued it from Sally’s mom’s yard sale.

Seeing the scar on his right deltoid reminded me of the time I was most worried about my dad.  It was only the removal of a cyst but seeing your dad come home with a bloody bandage as a 6 year old, is enough to fear the worst.  I think it was this “traumatic injury” he suffered that made us invent of the “TD” (tough daddy) t-shirt for him for father’s day, a t-shirt with the iron-on green letters “TD”.  I’m sure there are other times when I should’ve been more worried about my father, but I never knew it.  Either because I just wasn’t paying attention or because he just doesn’t complain….probably a combination of both.

He may still be a “Tough Daddy” to me, but often I forget my dad is real and vulnerable.  I am reminded how blessed I am to have him with me today.

Stepping on the Blocks

As I hoisted myself out of the Fairfield YMCA pool I was at eye level with the old starting block step. I immediately got a butterfly feeling in my gut, recalling all the times I had taken that first step.  It was as nerve wracking and exhilarating as taking the stage.  Taking that first step up meant you were committed to completing the event, whether it was 50 meters freestyle or 200 meters butterfly.  Although, I believe the butterflies were appropriately a bit more rambunctious for the 200 meter butterfly…enough to wanna make me hurl.  I think I could benefit from stepping onto a few more “blocks” in 2011 and really inviting the butterflies for a bit of play time in my gut.

Bibury Hill Repeats

I’ve probably run up that hill 1000 times in my lifetime, considering it’s one of 2 ways to re-enter my neighborhood and considering I’ve been running regularly since I was 14.  The memories strung together in the film in my head as I bust up Bibury are the following:

*running into swarms of gnats in the humid Ohio August weather during high school cross country training

*chasing E or C up the hill

*being chased by E or C up the hill

*doing hill repeats after a shot of vodka and a nurse’s phone call in June verifying that I had mono my senior year in college

Wabash River Cat

L and I went for a run along the Wabash River this morning on a barely snow packed trail.  As we crossed the bridge when driving, before parking to run, I distinctly remember my father’s Wabash River Cat story.  Every trip to visit Gramps and Grandma, we had to cross the Wabash River.  My dad would always tell me that if I were super quiet I would hear the river cat.  Now what a river cat would sound like is beyond me.  Another town we’d pass through was the home of  the infamous Francine.  My father informed me that Francine had the unfortunate circumstance of getting her finger stuck in her nose.

Talk about one way to scare a little girl into never again picking her nose (although I still take a dig every once in a while;)

but it was only beer!

Today my Chicago cousins, aunt, mother, and grandmother and I met up in Lafayette, IN.  We decided to repeat  our holiday get together we used to do 20 years ago at a hotel in Lafayette.  Sitting at the Lafayette Brewing Company for dinner, we recalled all kinds of memories we had of our summers at Bear Lake.  My cousin L, who was no more than 10 years old the last time we went, asked, “Was there a lot of drinking up at Bear Lake?” I could feel my mom, who spent most of her time reading and drinking tea by the dock or shopping every nook and cranny in a 70 mile radius, rolling her eyes.  “I recall trash cans full of beer and ice,” she said.  “But it was only beer,” my grandmother of 86, drinking the house lager, said in defense.  We all laughed.  We finished the evening playing ridiculously comical Christmas charades with the help of some of Milwaukee’s best.

Annual Christmas night run

During my annual Christmas night run I decided to spend my 90 minutes touring my old playgrounds.  The following is a list of the most memorable spots along the way:

Rolling Hills Swim and Tennis Club: where I spent most of my summers training, competing, sunning, boy watching, flipping burgers and eating Wednesday morning post practice eating donuts

The home of BH: the first boy I ever “slow danced” with (mummy danced more like it)

C’s family’s new home

Fairfield Aquatic Center: where I life-guarded one summer

1866 Doral Drive: our old house, I actually walked around the the backyard to see how different it had changed….no herb garden, no metal swing set, and the place where the dog and I had made our hand/paw prints in the curb had been replaced with new cement.

C’s next door house where I spent a good deal of my childhood playing and my first overnight experience that ended in oreo cookies, milk and a walk across the yard back home because I couldn’t fall asleep.

More high school friends’ homes where I’d hung out in the Hunter Road subdivisions: R’s, S’s, L’s

Harbin Park: I ran the back part of my high school cross country course in the snow.  That brought back the freshest memories and a bundle of anxious butterflies thinking back on all the mental toughness that had been tested race after race and training after training.  I recalled the summer nature camps, birthday parties, family Sunday picnics, walks with dates, science project research with dad and my first cross country practice where I was made fun of for wearing dangling teal colored earings.

Park, Red Oak, Evalie, Pleasant, Rolling Hills roads,: I ran past house after house where I had played and tried to grow up

A’s house: team mud fight and pool parties, M’s house: talent show dance rehearsals, R’s house: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun movie and slumber parties, L’s house: her big sister’s Cyndi Lauper music and learning that a screen door is not an exit through a failed trial

South Elementary School: the biggest playground ever!, my first bee sting, worms on asphalt on warm rainy days, Mr. C dressed up as a gorilla on Right to Read Week, playing chase with the boys and girls and having our classmate with Downs protect the girls, my mom’s eclectic and creative classroom and speech pathology “closet” office, arguing my right to be a member of the safety guard

Mom playing the organ

“Do you smell something burning?” Dad asked as he paced around the living room.  We were running the 40 year old electric organ that hadn’t been used in over 5 years.  Instead of taking grandma to the midnight candle light service my parents did not want to attend (though it’s been our tradition for at least 20 years) I encouraged my mom to brush off her organ playing skills for grandma’s sake.  This meant far more to my grandma than going to the service.  My mom used to play carols on the organ every Christmas Eve while my grandma and I would stand in the wings singing (quite badly I might add) while my father videotaped and my brother busied himself in the front window dancing and/or mooning the potential cars passing by.  In between carols my grandmother would reprimand my brother for embarrassing the entire family.  In return, he spat back obscene comments, like the one I remember from one year, “Grandma, go sniff your vagina.”

It was a jolly good time.

real job

It was the annual Christmas get together with high school friends this evening.  A friend’s significant other asked about one of my jobs.  When I mentioned that I was applying for a writing position with a big advertising firm he responded, “Oh, you mean a real job?”  “And what might that be?” I asked, “A job in which I can climb the corporate ranks by kissing ass? Work 9-5 with no sense of duty to humanity?”  I got a little hot and bothered.  But I reminded myself that “real” was a matter of perspective.  What mattered most was fulfilling what I feel is real while at the same time trying to remember that understanding what is “real” is like seeking “truth”: an endless search.  Half of making something “real” is believing.  Instead of defending myself when X prodded me with the “real job” comment, I should have saved my energy and reminded myself that what I believe in and feel cannot be explained.  It’s when someone steps out of what the majority believes is real that new opportunities are created.   Thank goodness Disney took a leap.

I’m reminded of Holly Golightly.  “She’s a phony, but she’s a real phony,” OJ Bergman says of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “You know why? Because she honestly believes in all this phony junk she believes in.”