There’s a TV show out now called Outlander. It’s not awesome and kind of makes me ashamed of myself to admit that I’ve watched some. The concept comes from a historical/fantasy series by an Arizonian woman named Diana Gabaldon. They are filled with romance and classic fantasy tropes. This is obviously why I don’t like it.

But. There’s something there. The main character is a modern woman from 1945 who is accidentally transported back in time to the Scottish Highlands of 1742.

Really, the reason I watched it in the first place was because I love everything about old Scotland. But as I watched, I became interested in how they were using time as a plot device.

And this is ultimately a huge point in Proust that isn’t hard to overlook. He works in his time jumps quite well. But still, the plot device is there. The book starts with the end and jumps back to the beginning right in those first fifty pages of Swann’s Way.

And this is a huge question for my writing. My book will use time like this. I want it to be created out of juxtaposed memories and current realities. I really need to figure out how I’m going to do that. But what I think it does is create a really interesting dynamic and atmosphere. And that’s the point of my writing.

It’s spring. Really almost summer, especially according to the weather. Everything is alive. Plants are blooming under the sun, but it’s not too hot yet. Even in the early morning, before 6 am, the light is bright, the sky a brilliant blue. Birds chatter and sing, maybe ten, maybe a million.

It makes me think of the future. Well, I’m always thinking of the future, planning, hoping, dreaming. But in spring the world seems wide open, the future is coming closer, faster and faster. It’s the end of the formal year. Here comes the short summer season and then a new year again.

And what will I do with this next year? And the year after? And all these years after that? What do I want? Where am I going?

I didn’t expect to find myself back at the desire to pursue my degree in creative writing. And I definitely didn’t expect to be uninterested in getting a MFA in creative writing. I always assumed that if I pursued creative writing, I’d go all the way.

But with an Evergreen education, I have options to make it almost better than a MFA. And I’m also just skeptical about MFA programs. I’ve heard so many stories of writers learning to write as their professors like them to, not how they actually write. I hear of people who rediscover that writing is actually fun. It’s like they had the fun beat out of them and it’s just become work.

I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to earn my right to write from some professors who maybe don’t look at writing the way I do. I want to take it. I don’t mean that in a forceful way. I mean that I want to exert my right to write without seeking permission or confirmation. I want to take my right to put pencil to paper, fingers to keyboard and write freely, how I want to.

If it feels like I’m saying “the right to write” a lot, it’s because I am. The Right to Write is a book by Julia Cameron, who also wrote The Artist’s Way. Her books try to give advice to writers (and artists) about how to further their craft. The Right to Write is full of personal stories and teaching concepts, and exercises to apply your learning.

I’ve actually never done any of these exercises for real. I have a hard time responding to prompts. I remember, as a child, my parents tried to tell me I was a good writer. But my teacher, specifically in fourth grade, sent home a weekly writing prompt. I didn’t enjoy them. At Thanksgiving, the prompt was so awful that I refused to do the assignment. My mom convinced me to write about why I hated it so much. And I decided that they had to be lying about being a good writer.

That didn’t mean I didn’t love writing. I have always lived in a world of stories. Every story grows from my mind, expanding until I’m uncomfortable with how huge it’s become. I suppose I should feel that way about my own story. It is, after all, the only story I’ve been telling continuously throughout my life. And it’s the only story that is utterly unpredictable.

But still I tell it. So what does the future look like? I see a summer of research and learning to be a more disciplined writer. In the fall I will sit down for hours every day and try to pound out huge quantities of words. I have every expectation for myself to write a complete book in those ten weeks. First, I have to be sure I go in with a solid plan, of course.

Mostly because I like solid plans. I’m not particularly good at them. I suppose that’s why my solid plans are these stories I tell myself. In reality, the last year is the most solid my life has ever been. Perhaps that’s because I’m in control of it, so it feels more solid than the 18 years I spent with my parents. But who knows how well my work will go? Who knows what the book will turn into? I have a dream of trying to find an agent in spring quarter. How the hell will that happen?

My imaginary story of publication before graduating might be a pipe dream. That’s okay. I’m going to keep working on it, regardless of how well it goes. I will write this book and I will edit it in winter and spring quarters. And during the whole thing I will try to keep moving my future possibilities forward.

Hopefully, in summer 2016, I will write another book. In 2016-2017 I’ll take another class and do one or two internships, maybe with a publisher I’d be interested in working with or with Hugo House. I will continue to grow my relationship. I want us to move somewhere healthier. I want to have a real kitchen and dining room, maybe an office. I want a little garden. I want a cat now… and maybe a baby in the future. That will continue to be the hardest decision about my future. Not just mine, ours.

Today, the groundwork is laid and the stories are just stories. I hope that tomorrow, next month, next spring, they are true.

I want to talk about the quote by Proust that I mentioned in my final paper:

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.”

Proust is pretty smart when it comes to thinking about what the past will mean to us in the future. My Oma is traveling abroad to me, she is not immortal, but she is just here. She remains bathed in all the memories I shared with her and all the moments she spent in her life leading up until her battle with Alzheimer’s. Who is to say what she does remember from her battle with Alzheimer’s either?

Oma occupies my thoughts constantly and especially while I’ve been working on the memory project. She meant so much to me and she taught me so much of her wisdom that I want use in my life from now on. Although her time with Alzheimer’s was ultimately a terrible thing to happen, it did teach me to cherish memories. Now I have the responsibility and the want to cherish her memories alongside mine too. It’s my job to know all I can about my grandma and to be able to share it with other people and my future family.

I thank her for the opportunity she has given me even after her death. I will be traveling abroad (with her in spirit) next fall to Indonesia with an independent contract to write a book about Alzheimer’s and family. I couldn’t of done it without her incredible life stories.

There is difference between the two main women in Kindred. Dana coming from a totally different perspective than Alice. Dana is a modern woman who has only read about slavery, while Alice, a free woman at the beginning, has grown up in a society that condones slavery. Alice looks at death as being better than slavery, but Dana does not. Dana knows survival is the better pathway as long as there is a chance for freedom. I believe a difference is also shown by the past of Dana and Alice. Dana had experienced real freedom, while Alice only knew of a white man or woman being able to do whatever they please to her. Because Rufus kept abusing Alice, she saw no hope in her future. Dana is willing to do anything for freedom.
Dana is a strong character in Kindred and this book is told from her point of view. We first see Dana’s reactions to returning to the antebellum South, her interpretation of the nature of her white ancestor Rufus, to her feelings about her husband and the oppression of black people and American Indians in the nineteenth century, and her beginning to understanding the lost and strengths of black people in general. (slaves in particular)
Because we are reading at Dana’s point of view, we can understand her reactions to her experiences and brutality of the slavery era. Dana seems powerless when she returns to the antebellum South whenever Rufus’s life is endangered. Rufus develops from a boy who bonds with Dana into a complete racist who tries to rape her and Dana’s desire to protect Rufus kind of disappointed me. Dana’s narration makes it vivid for readers to image the cruelty and hardships black people faced in the antebellum South. Seeing slaves beaten, makes Dana and us readers aware that the beatings and abuse slaves suffered were much more shocking in reality than we see on tv and in films. Butler’s use of Dana as narrator rejuvenates the book’s subject matter.

In class we talked about the “composite” of Proust’s characters he makes up. These characters are made up to be apart of this “general subject” what ever that may be, but he does this so the reader can relate to these characters/ situations. During seminar “The big truth is suppose to resonate with you ( the reader) was said and this quote ties in with what my smaller workshop discussed about “it being okay to write a story for the ‘entertainment’ or the ‘good story’ but with a little bit of the truth. So then it appeals to the reader. It was also said that literary texts draw readers to ‘relate” using universal aspects. This concept reminds of me other art forms. Such as a musician, and how you’re not a “TRUE” musician if you’re not someone who sings from experience writing meaningful lyrics to draw in your audience (the reader)–> i think it’s all about interpretation then. because the artists interprets their views on the subject (what ever that may be) but if they’re being  a “TRUE MUSICIAN” they leave their audience with an impression giving them something to think about and to draw their own views on the piece.

Tasia asked me if I had remembered the therapies my parent’s put me in and I answered vaguely. But now that I had the time to think about it.

Even though my early childhood is a complete blank, my mother’s passion for recording important and minor moments in our family’s life through photography. With my mother’s great mostly clerical memory   and the pictures to support her recollection, I was able to draw that as a child and to my current adulthood I learned and related better through music. My mom placed me in a private class where my teacher taught children’s basic knowledge. Such as the ABC’s, Counting, body parts, knowing my name etc. but they taught me these things through song and dance technique. This particular learning style helped me excel along with the physical, speech and occupational therapies she said i was in.

Although there were other parts that stood out to me through out the movie, what stood out the most was the “cinematography” aspects.(what i think it’s called). I noticed that in certain points  of Proust’s memory, the setting of the scene would be highlighted by this bright light thats looks like it was coming from the windows and even the lamps in the room or which ever source of lighting it is gets bright and distorts the part of the scene that it’s highlighting. I was wondering if this was intentional?

Journal Entry #9

June 2nd, 2015

As I plow through the pithy center of Time Regained, I find myself unexpectedly satisfied by the sudden shift that the author takes from the cryptic wordiness of earlier volumes to the frank, more straightforward tone of this final chapter in his anthology. Proust has achieved a sort of immortality by distilling the essence of his life into a work which he has artfully encapsulated for future generations to ponder. This is the ultimate sense of regaining time: reaching back through writing to recapture the most memorable moments of one’s life while simultaneously casting those experiences far out into the future. I can imagine Proust at the point of his life when this was written; in and out of the sanatorium, nearing his end, bedridden and frail, squinting at the page as he urgently records his thoughts in the dimly lit twilight of his chambers. Reading his novel is like opening the pages of Proust’s mind. Naturally as he neared his own end and the completion of his life’s work, he would want to impart to the reader a final message of inspiration, if not for our sake then simply to find meaning in his own project. Throughout the work, not only does the reader roll on the sea of Proust’s consciousness to be tossed around in the tempest of his thoughts or to drift along through the vast expanse of his endless metaphors and poeticism, but now we are peeling back a new layer where Proust is thinking about thinking. He is analyzing his own work.

It is as though he is giving instructions to any writer who would be inclined to follow in his footsteps by describing his perception of the art of writing itself. I like his idea that creating art is an instinct that we all possess. He believes that although the ability is innate in each of us, to indulge it requires so much force of will that most people don’t heed their inclination. He also professes that the best writing isn’t something that can be intellectualized or contrived, but to be truly great one must call on a deeper form of self expression. While we all have experiences that are common enough that anyone can relate to them,  if a writer can synthesize their own memories then they can use their experiences to express something of themselves that transcends the ordinary and is unique to themselves.

In this way a single fictitious character in a novel could represent the culmination of years of observations, experiences, and memories on the part of the author and the essential traits of 50 or more people encountered in daily life. He compares his lifelong observations to a painter recording through use of a sketchbook. “…In the end the writer realizes that if his dream of being a sort of painter was not in a conscious and intentional manner capable of fulfillment, it has nevertheless been fulfilled and that he too, for his work as a writer, has unconsciously made use of a sketch-book.” (Proust 305) Rather than simply parroting the manners of others, Proust believes that writing about them as characters gives them new meaning, and draws out essential truths in their behavior. He says “The stupidest people, in their gestures, their remarks, the sentiments which they involuntarily express, manifest laws which they do not themselves perceive but which the artist surprises in them.” (Proust 307)

This section contains one of my favorite lines of Proust. In my mind’s eye I can imagine Proust living his last days as a tortured soul even more vividly than in the scene of the film which depicts him dictating the novel from his bed. He writes:

“…A writer’s work, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his heart.” (Proust 318)

During this weeks reading of Time Regained I found Proust’s musings on morality and human nature to be quite intriguing. The narrator of Time Regained describes some of his characters as being rather two faced in both their actions and emotions. One character which spring instantly to mind is M. de Charlus(the Barron). M. de Charlus is described multiple times by the narrator to be “at heart -very kind(166).” The narrator believes that the katy exterior which M. de Charlus can some time display is false, and that within him he has no real malice. Yet, some time after the Baron’s death, Marcel discovers a letter of confession from him. The letter days that Morel was right to not come and visit him after their falling out because if he had, he would have killed him: He was, in resisting my appeals, the instrument of divine wisdom, for I was resolved, had he come, that he should not leave my house alive. One of the two of us had to disappear. I had decided to kill him(168).” This information begs the question, was M. de Charlus a good person who pretended to be unkind, or was he a bad person who fooled people like marcel into thinking his snide behavior was all part of an act? Maybe it is neither? Perhaps the point of M. de Charlus is to simply be a caricature of the human condition, and expressed that people can be capable of great kindness and great cruelty. Even Morel, who says that he fears the Baron, and that Marcel does not know him as he does(166), says almost in the same breath “Good heavens, yes! I know he is kind. And Wonderfully considerate, and honest(166).”

The irony in the moral contradictions of people is perhaps the most explicit in the brothel scene of Time Regained. The young men working at the brothel take on the role of criminal for the pleasure of their customers, who are aroused and delighted at the idea that they are fraternising with a murderer or thief, but becomes outraged at the idea that such men could tell a lie, namely the lie that they are criminals. “The client, in his naivety, is astounded, for with his arbitrary conception of the gigolo, while he gets a thrill of delight from the numerous murders of which he believes him to be guilty, he is horrified by any simple contradiction or lie which he detects in his words(195).”

On a grander scale, the narrator points out the peculiarities in how people weigh different moral values. On page 204 of Time Regained the narrator looks at how patriotism might be compared to sexual virtue: “There was a page-boy from a hotel who was absolutely terrified because of all the money the Baron offered him if he would go to his house! …The boy, who in fact only cares about women, was reassured when he understood what was wanted of him. Hearing all these promises of money, he had taken the baron for a spy. And he was greatly relieved when he realized that he was being asked to sell not his country but his body, is is possibly not a more moral thing to do, but less dangerous, and in any case easier.” In this selection of reading it is safe to say that sexual deviance(according to the period), though still considered wrong, was not nearly as heinous an act as betraying one’s country. The greater danger of treason insinuates that moral responsibilities toward one’s country trump moral responsibilities to the self.

Francoise, Marcel’s servant, is also contradictory in her display of moral character. The clearest example I can come up with is her display of compassion. Francoise is intense in her display of empathy and compassion when the victim of a cruel world is not within her presence, and “she parades her grief(229).” Yet, when the suffering individual is in her presence, she displays and air of disdain. At the death of Robert Francoise, who hadn’t thought much of him in life, “descanted upon the memory of the dead man with frenzied threnodies and lamentations(229).” When given the opportunity to put her sympathy for the dead to some use, by comforting marcel, she instead becomes uncomfortable and turns away from him. The narrator claims this is not a trait significant to Francoise, but to many “emotional people.” Her behavior reminds me of a quote from page 154 of the book when Marcel is discussing the possible destruction of a statute which M. de Charlus describes as an “affirmation of faith and energy.” Marcel corrects him: “You mean it’s symbol, Monsieur, and I adore certain symbols no less than you do. But it would be absurd to sacrifice to the symbol the reality that it symbolizes.” This is what I would say Francoise is doing, she puts all her energy into projecting the appearance of empathy, but when it is time to put it into action, she is cold and aloof.

The idea of sacrificing reality to the symbol may be a problem as universal as having a conflicted sense of morality. I do not believe that these are new problems, but I can not help but wonder if the rise of the middle class, which during lecture has been described as the dawn of “keeping up appearances,” might have exacerbated our sense that moral symbolism was more important than moral reality.

“All love affairs fail, and fail in the same way. All journey’s end in disappointment. All satisfactions are too little and too late. Death picks off the narrators admired mentors one by one, rekindling and reinforcing his childhood feelings of abandonment.” Proust Among the Stars Pg.7 of the Preface

This comes from the book written by Malcolm Bowie. He correctly identifies each of Marcel’s relationships. Marcel yearns for each one of the characters in different ways. He yearns for his mother’s affection, the attention of Mme de Villeparisis, the band of girls, Gilberte, Albertine, etc. He suffers from the incapacity to experience happiness. He is ultimately obsessive in each of his relationships. He isolates himself to make himself suffer by making impossible demands- similarly to other characters in his book such as does Swann, the Narrator, and Charlus.

We watch as Swann makes impossible demands of Odette, obsessing over her relationships with other men. Such as the night he believed she was cheating on him with someone else because she told him not to come over because she didn’t feel well. He watched outside what he thought to be her window, seeing lights and light talking. He comes to find he was looking in the wrong window all along.

Marcel is infatuated with Albertine but he is too obsessed over her being with another woman. He spends all his time discovering if she really is interested in women, driving each other both to the ends of hysterics.

Proust reaches a conclusion- while it is depressing, it does express his thoughts clearly-

“The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.”