Retrospective

I suppose I should mention what stands out in retrospect to a reader who wasn't paying special attention until now...

Well, there is, of course, the madeleine:

I'm not sure how much fresh there is to say. What strikes (and disturbs) me most (about involuntary memory), which this episode points up, is the powerlessness we have over our experience of life. Proust experiences transport. He experiences nostalgia, which denotes a certain fondness. But there are involuntary memories that are disturbing.

I was once walking with a female friend through the central campus of University of Michigan (UM). It was summer, with its rich smell of pollen. We (the friend and I) had such fun together. We were unromantic roommates. I glanced to my right to see an ex-girlfriend appear from behind a trunk. She sat there unaware, typing on her computer. Our breakup had been awful for me, and seeing her was shocking: My gut plummeted, and I was silent with my friend for minutes. She must have thought me angry, sick, tired---who knows now? But I can no longer walk by the environment school on the west or even smell the pregnant odor of tree pollen without a terrible sinking feeling. The horrible cum-smell of lindens is the worst. A repulsed glance at that elm she leaned against....

I am powerless. In the sense that I cannot control my emotional response to the things I encounter. Only my subsequent physical behavior. This is (I think now) the most important sense of involuntary memory: The the convoluted brain complicates stimuli; but we choose our behavior (if we're sane enough, have enough self-control).

Elstir the painter and great art:

How quick and irrelevant is our judgment in terms of historical legacy. How irrelevant is the judgment of others, frankly: Eliot says that all meaning requires the key of interpretation. What if we don't have the key? What if only the artist has the key to his work? The most meaningful work can be rendered "meaningless"...

Girls--romances--and how they come and go:

Marcel the fictional young man is so taken by some young girls, their exquisite complexions. They're never mentioned again---the women, that is, in their current state. Only in his memory, as they once were, are they relevant to him. Some people are so meaningful to us. Some people who were once so meaningful to us are now so irrelevant.

How can I trust my own judgment...?