Summer I. Time regained

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Spring XXV. The end of spring

To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume -- some hidden link of association in what I read -- I know not what it may have been -- took me back to school-boy holidays: I recovered with strange intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away to the seaside, which is one of childhood’s blessings. I was in the train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass. Thanks to a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where crowds assemble; I am speaking; too, of a time more than forty years ago, when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England, east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its beauty and its solitude. At every station the train stopped; little stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the sunshine where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue. Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether the tide was high or low -- stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus. Of a sudden, our station!

Ah, that taste of the brine on a child’s lips! Nowadays, I can take holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it please me; but that salt kiss of the sea air I shall never know again. My senses are dulled; I cannot get so near to nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her wind, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and leapt exultingly... I can but look at what I once enjoyed.

Alpha.

Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time was published (at the author’s expense) in 1913. Both Gissing, in Ryecroft, and Proust played repeatedly with this idea of the past being brought to mind by one thing or another. Proust was more determined in hunting down and articulating the triggers and process of this phenomenon. The mechanism is perhaps not so important as the result -- but I think Proust is right in emphasizing taste and smell as having the most profound affect on reviving our memories.

Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once, A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

-Diane Ackerman A Natural History of the Senses

I spent my earliest childhood years in the hot and humid heart of America, in a region defined by great rivers. Ever since, I have lived in the arid to Mediterranean West. On the rare occasions when some meteorological anomaly gives us a hot and humid day -- with perhaps a rain shower falling on steaming asphalt -- I am transported back in time to my childhood in a most powerful way. Not only do I remember the street and the houses, but also a hint of the feeling of being the child I was then, when this block of an old, but ordinary, suburban street was my whole world. I wonder then what’s become of the girl who was my best friend then -- who, I’m sad to say, I never think of otherwise.

In all of these instances, I think we recall ourselves, not a child we once were. It is Proust burying his face in his aunt’s quilt, Gissing (I’m guessing) recalling the sea air, and me wondering about my friend and hoping the gas station on the corner still has an Orange Crush in the old coffin-style soft drink dispensing machine.

Beta.

I finally gave up on my old cell phone today and bought its replacement. With these phones you usually have the option of saving your address book to the SIM card. I imagined that you could then transfer your information to a new phone along with the SIM card -- and perhaps, if the new phone is identical with the old, that does work. But it didn’t in my case. So all my information needs to be re-entered. And the phone’s interface seems to have been designed to punish you for buying an amazingly cheap device. Fair enough, I suppose -- though I hardly use the thing so I feel no urge to spend more than $17.

As always with these modern marvels, the manual describes a plethora of features I will never use. You’d think they might punish you for being thrifty by only giving you a few, easy to use features. But apparently not. Still, the tiny thing is an awkward calculator, a dubious alarm clock and timer, a tedious calendar, and a memo pad of doubtful value, in addition to its voice and text communication capabilities. I can remember when I would have paid much more for a device that could have done any of these things just as badly. And, as a person who remembers telephone party-lines, the basic voice and text capabilities still amaze me.

I just hope this phone doesn’t end up going through the washer like the last one did -- but that was many years ago.

Postscript: Alas, alas! I thought the little wonder had survived it's bath unharmed but the "1" key rarely works now. Perhaps it will recover with time and use? But probably not.

Next: Summer II. Traveling.