There’s a specific moment when I was in the fourth grade that I remembered when I was younger.  I was brushing my teeth ain the bathroom and so was my brother.  I had an intense question that was weighing on my mind, I asked my brother, “What if what you’re seeing is different from what I’m seeing?”  I was asking a question that was essentially about how our minds perceived the world.  How our eyes may see different things, or hear differences but we can’t vocalize them to one another because it can’t escape the reality we’ve created.  At the time though, this was something that I couldn’t really understand or name.

In relation to Proust I identify with the narrator in his novel, when he was a young man living in Combray.  I was caught up in deep emotions, thoughts that I couldn’t quite name or understand.  I would fixate on specific people, places, thoughts and ideas.  Many people told me that I was a daydreamer when I was younger, I was stuck within in my own world of thoughts and dreams.  I was so amazed by the universe and the complexity of my understanding of reality that often it would lead me to questions that none around me had the answer to.  I’m curious if engaging with a memoir will help me uncover the troubles of my youth or if it will be a fabrication that I will not understand.

Proust’s exploration of memory through fictional characters is an interesting approach.  Aren’t all the characters in memoirs portrayed as fictional, even though they’re portrayed as real people?  Remembering a specific moment and creating a story out of it may actually distance someone from the reality of the actions.