Surrealist Café Opens!

On today's menu, the results of our first Surrealist Café community collage.  Readers will recall that we asked you to walk into a cafe precisely at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, and record, in whatever medium you chose (poetry, prose, photography, etc.), what you observed.  These contributors seized the time, and amazed us with their originality, fecundity and talent.  All contributions are (c) 2011 by their individual creators.

This post is dedicated to the memory of our friend, mentor, role model, and surrealist creative, Jane Winslow Eliot, who died at home in Venice, California on Sunday, July 31.

       *     *     *     *  

Margo Berdeshevsky, Starbucks, Rue de Rivoli, Paris, France:

 

       *     *     *     *

John Harris, Les Deux Magots, Boulevard Saint Germain, Paris, France:

Hemingway would have called her "a well built woman," meaning sturdy and with a good shape. Her long hair, cascading in multi-colored curly strands reflects light like the leaves of Paris' majestic plane trees. She is reading Sartre's Nausea in French, and I know she is French because she wears her clothes well, and not the other way around--as with many chic American women. If there is a "seduction" factor in France that goes deeper than sex, it is here in the café, where Hemingway and his women float through like ghosts, making my heart beat faster.

         *     *     *     *

Diane Sherry Case, Starbucks, 26th and Wilshire, Santa Monica:

I wanted this to be playful. But in came a girl with a bashed-in face. Her remorseful boyfriend spent the night in jail, bloody fists and bloodless heart. He remembered their love way too late as his fist flew toward her face and he just couldn’t stop it, he just can’t stop it. I wanted this to be fun. But here she is, her lips caked with blood. Her son came home all hyped up and wired, swearing, You stupid bitch. Then out flew her truth. I never wanted you to begin with, I was sixteen years old. I just wanted to be playful. But here she stands with a bruised green nose. Plastic surgery, what are credit cards for? A new nose, some pouty lips, as if men will come running with hard-ons for her, a hundred hard-ons, she could choose. She picks up her purse, afraid to be seen, and leaves, as the kid with the derby stands there calling her name, Stella, chai latte, Stella, chai latte. 

     *     *     *     *   

Janelle Balnicke, mobile sidewalk cafe, Worthing-on-Sea, England, UK:

See Worthy Widow Walking by Worthing-on-Sea, Saturday July 30th 1PM

 

       *     *     *     *

Tara Ison, Steve's Espresso, Tempe, AZ, USA:

A chalkboard whiteboard blank-parchment fresh-drywalled neck nape, this faceless fetus-soft young boy sitting there back to me, young man man-boy, spread sheet of buttered filo leaves asking to be rolled stuffed baked tasted swallowed whole, a new-shelled pink abalone steak slab smelling of weed and salt and waiting to be licked and nipped by wolves, sniffed and gripped by some mean old bitch who has gone from buttery young flesh herself to crusty dry talon’d owl, who who who is she anymore to taste wet plump tongue and will he leave flee finish his coffee and leap upon his hyped-up hipster sneakered feet and buoyant himself away, will the back of his young man boy neck escape so easily my horned veined crepe’d hand before I am over and done? 

     *     *     *     *

Stuart Balcomb, Rose Café, Venice, CA, USA: 

TEN CITIES: See how the scene and circumstances change with each new location:

Los Angeles: the Player, in his requisite Hollywood black, pitching a script to a hot, young actress.

Seattle: art dealer in Pioneer Square, lunching with his gallery assistant.

Buenos Aires: metal sculptor in La Boca, tourists from Florida at next table.

Boston: jazz club owner, discussing his lease with landlord's wife.

Seville: meeting his daughter-in-law for the first time, his only son having died last week.

Perpignan: owns four fishing boats, wants to sell one.

Albuquerque: Hitman, flown-in to find former mob member, now in the Witness Protection Program.

Munich: Belgian tourist, imploring his estranged niece to stay and have a litre of Hefeweizen.

Palm Springs: retired airline pilot, moved here for his asthma condition.

San Francisco: bartender on his day off, lunching with waitress he secretly loves, but won't ever tell her.

     *     *     *     *

Scott MacFarlane, The Bunker, Mount Vernon, WA, USA:

“Bunker”

One o’clock      
     home      
     from the inferno, from her      
     duodenum raging            
          like Der Führer concussed in his bunker, 
          like a pickax impaling the blue iris of her mortality,
          like stillbirthing.

“I can’t live like this.” Woe and tears
     drip
     drip
     drip of drugs
          end her Third Reich of agony,
          extract the axe
          resurrect the old her,
     day-to-day. 
          Saturday’s
          peace of 
          acquiescing
          pain.

     *     *     *     *

Ann Denk, Café Inconnu, Newport Beach, CA, USA: 

 

        *     *     *     *

Joanne Warfield, Rose Café, Venice, CA, USA:  

Little Kenzo

Ahh, little Kenzo, full of pure joy,
What’s to become of this four-year-old boy?

A rocket scientist or a priest yet to be?
What lies in his future, the world will soon see.

There’s hope, I do glean, in his backpack of books,
and in the kind eyes of his mother’s sweet look.

With all of our children so gently embraced,
This surely would foster a true state of grace.

     *     *     *     *

Steve De Jarnatt, Food, Pico Boulevard, West Los Angeles, CA, USA:

A familiar face.  A face that feeds me. On the Westside now. But it had given sustenance mid-town for years. It all came back one day. Judy, Judy – Judy’s.

I’m a regular — tri-salad to go, meatloaf from heaven. Comfort. FOOD. And idle, always interesting chat. The Eames—ADD—locavores. Today I go by ruled by time, on an expedition to capture a moment. But she’s not in today far as I can see. I scour the faces. Families picking crusts like any other, the solitary ones who homestead a table for the day—the Gort glow of their MacBooks winking. Nothing to write home about. Or to Paris.

There she is — in the kitchen. Judy’s reddened mug. Overseeing something emerging from the oven? Crying. With someone else who’s crying. Through the portal square, framed beside The Specials. String hair down from the bun. Moving from the frame, off stage—unknown.

     *     *     *     *

Suki Kitchell Edwards, 8100 feet up Animas Mountain, Durango, CO, USA: 

 

       *     *     *     *

Dawna Kemper, Pat’s, Topanga Canyon, CA, USA:

Bright yellow bandana-print muumuu fringed bottom smocked bodice you keep pulling up to cover the bikini top with the cacophony of black and white letters pressed against each other. What do they say? (I can’t tell without staring.) Speaking Spanish to the waitress to your husband to God. Unruly waves of dull brown hair pushed free of your face by a wide stretchy black band bold in your pockmarked makeup-free beauty. Flip flop dangles and falls from your pink lacquered toes and stays off, foot dangling free naturally expressive the hands, too, painting words while you speak chopping smoothing waxing the air in front of you. You eyed my boyfriend’s plate when it arrived, then back to talking niños with your husband hands still moving pausing only when your own plate of eggs was delivered, latching hands with your man to offer up a whispered rezo a Dios.

       *     *     *     *  

Bruce Moody, Café Inconnu, Crockett, CA, USA:

The Crimson Jumper

She walked a hundred miles in one week, once. From a disappointment in love. She didn’t know where she walked. Those old roads. Her head down. Just walked. Until love fortified itself in her, and dropped off its silver lamé of being duped. Now she sits guarded by her garments, which are unremarkable, which fit, which are comfortable and offer neither disguise nor invitation. She bends over her gadget. It does not mean anything to her, but it works for work. This is a strong woman, the air around her declares. Or a stronger woman. Stronger than before. She does not trumpet it. It is just in the air, like oxygen is in the air. Useful. Wiser. Benevolent.

       *     *     *     *

Lorie Adair: Steve’s Espresso Café, Tempe, AZ, USA:

He scratches behind an ear, cups his chin in a hand pale as a fish. He speaks to a friend; his mouth is thin, teeth the color of dishwater. Reaching into his pocket, he shifts to stand. At 6’ 3”, his thin legs poke from blue scruffs. He removes an I-Touch, rubs his fingers along the screen. He listens to his friend, grunts, holds the Touch 8 inches from his face. He sets it on the table, nods at his companion then lifts the screen again. He tilts it; a background beat of Soul. He stands, signals the barista. “Another to go.” He flips open courier bag, placing Touch in its pocket, angling laptop in its slot. Humidity like sex. Later, he reaches for the Touch, scrolls through the list, his forefinger sliding along glass. Caressing black space, he forgets the color of her eyes, the brand of lipstick she wears.

       *     *     *     *

Patrice Bilawka, Café Literati, West Los Angeles, CA, USA

Dusty Brogues

The Stranger strolled into the café and took his place across from me. Every day, same time—10 a.m. Just like me. He rarely looked around, but when he did he would sometimes cringe. His eyes were a blue, watery abyss. We never spoke. But I thought, “Maybe today… yes, maybe I should say hello.” Would I smile, or nonchalantly stammer a quick greeting? I would just do it. And whatever came out would be fine. I was looking at his shoes. Dusty brogues. Then I brought up my glance, and…the Stranger disappeared. He didn’t get up and leave, or switch to a different chair. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed. No. But he was gone. Do crazy people know they are going crazy? Do they keep things to themselves, like seeing people disappear? That was 7 weeks 2 days and 4 hours ago. The Stranger has not returned, and I have not seen anyone vanish since.

       *     *     *     *

Jon Hess, Café Literati, West Los Angeles, CA, USA:

"We close in five minutes," says the cricket behind the counter at Café Literati. Her fabulous gold hoop earrings sway, patting her neck. Her freckles are peach colored. "Well?" Her smile is nice -- her sadness deep. Her guitar is waiting for her in the trunk of her beat-up old Honda Civic. Chairs are put on tables. I'm the last customer. I wanted to tell her that I came here to write about her for my friend's blog "Paris Play." But then the seductive mystery of not knowing would be shattered and she would no longer be a stranger. Then I want to tell her to never stop singing, because her music heals her. The room is quiet for a moment. Minutes later, I step onto the LA street and imagine Paris.

       *     *     *     *

Richard Beban, Café André Breton, Paris, France:

Baby Bird Update

They get so BIG.

The first picture is mom and the kids yesterday (Tuesday).  We know it's mom, because you'll note that she has a deformity, a scissor beak, that doesn't stop her from being able to feed the chicks.  But we wonder how she feeds HERSELF.

And below, the ten-day olds, posing this morning (Wednesday) with dad.  You'd be that big that fast, too, if your parents kept force-feeding you a high-protein shake.

 

At Play In The Surrealist Café

Today the sun begins its annual passage through the Lion constellation. It’s time to get serious—about play.

“What if?” the Surrealists liked to ask.

What if all of you, or many of you, or the lion-hearted and the playful among you, were to participate with us in a Surrealist game?

Yes? 

Of course you would!  Here's how:

1.)  On Saturday, July 30, precisely at 1 p.m. in your time zone, wherever you are in the world, walk into your favorite café;

2.)  pick one stranger walking by, or in the room;

3.)  write a paragraph (150 words maximum), or a poem (same word count), take a photo, or draw a picture, or even write a song, about him or her. Abstract, figurative, or realist, you choose.

And what if you sent your café composition to us by Tuesday, August 2, at 6 p.m. Paris time, and we published it in Paris Play the following Saturday, August 6?

What sort of collage would be created by all your various hearts and minds?

Forget whether you’re an artist, or a student, or a lawyer, or a mother, or all of the above. The point of this is the magic of collaboration and synchronicity. Please join us!

               *     *     *

“Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child…. But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes" is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world.”

—Thus Spake Zarathustra, part I, Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann.

Birth Announcement

A pair of our neighborhood Eurasian Collared Doves, who spent some days a couple of weeks ago building a stick nest among the red geraniums in a neighbor's window box, successfully hatched their clutch of two eggs on Monday, and are now raising two chicks.

Monday Unveiling

We can't tell the difference between the parents with our naked (or even binocular-clad) eyes, but birding sites say that the male and female work shifts (dad in the day, mom at night) sitting on the babies to keep them warm, and feeding them with the usual partially-digested regurgitated baby bird gruel that parents make.  (Let's not go there.)

Tuesday it rained, but regurgitation must go on

Since these pictures were taken in the daytime, this is Dad and the youngsters. The helpless, down-covered babies take from fifteen to eighteen days to become fledglings (with developed feathers, and with wing muscles that are capable of flight). We believe that our human neighbors never open their courtyard windows, which emboldened the Eurasians. The geraniums do well with the oblique sunlight (this view is down to a fourth-floor window box in a six-story building), and with the intermittent summer rains.

According to Wikipedia, the Eurasians are originally from subtropical Asia, but successfully spread during the 20th Century to inhabit a range from the Arctic Circle in Norway, to the Urals in Russia, and south into Morocco and Egypt. Introduced into the Bahamas in 1970, when it is believed that some pet Eurasians escaped their cages, the species has dispersed primarily into the Gulf Coast, but can now be found as far as Alaska, as far west as California, and as far south as Vera Cruz. Some birding sources speculate that it is filling the ecological niche of the now-extinct Passenger Pigeon. It does not appear to compete with either the Mourning Dove, or with another "invasive" (non-native) species, the Rock Pigeon.

Like swans, the Eurasians are said to be loyal mates.

As recent immigrants ourselves, we welcome our new neighbors, and appreciate their echoing, resonant coo-cooooo-cooing in the courtyard outside our bedroom window. Even Marley, the cat, listens at the window for their music, perhaps more attentively than we.

This big on Tuesday

This much bigger on Wednesday

The Greek Gods and Goddesses Consider Proust

“A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the sequence of the hours, the order of the years and worlds. He consults them instinctively as he wakes and reads in a second the point on the earth he occupies, the time that has elapsed before his waking; but their ranks can be mixed up, broken.”

     —Part 1, Combray, “Swann’s Way,” Marcel Proust

Hestia: Proust’s home:

I am standing before the walls of his recreated bedroom.

It’s a facsimile, I know, but the walls are lined with the same material.

I have known this story for years, but it’s the thing that moves me, that opens the door to my soul.

Look at this harsh desk—lacquered black, uninviting. But the narrow brass bed with its dusky blue spread—this is where he wrote most of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, lying down, late at night, the cork preventing the light and the sounds and dust of Boulevard Haussmann from intruding upon the unwinding of memory. 

A friend of his, the writer, Countess Anna de Noailles, suggested lining the room with cork.

I search all over Paris for the café in which I can write. But what I really want is a cork-lined room, where I won’t need a fan to block out the sounds of neighbors.

Did any writer who ever lived create a better shell to protect his delicate sensitivity? Like a hermit crab.

Artemis:

Marcel Proust, whose Sun in Cancer in his natal horoscope is reflected in his deep ties to his mother, memory and nature. Has any writer ever written so many lush metaphors about flowers and trees?

“It was in the Month of Mary that I remember beginning to be fond of hawthorns. Not only were they in the church, which was so holy but which we had the right to enter, they were put up on the altar itself, inseparable from the mysteries in whose celebration they took part, their branches running out among the candles and holy vessels, attached horizontally to one another in a festive preparation and made even lovelier by the festoons of their foliage, on which were scattered in profusion, as on a bridal train, little bunches of buds of a dazzling whiteness. But, though I dared not do more than steal a glance at them, I felt that the ceremonious preparations were alive and that it was nature herself who, by carving those indentations in the leaves, by adding the supreme ornament of those white buds, had made the decorations worthy of what was at once a popular festivity and a mystical celebration. Higher up, their corollas opened here and there with a careless grace, still holding so casually, like a last and vaporous adornment, the bouquets of stamens, delicate as gossamer, which clouded them entirely, that in following, in trying to mime deep inside myself the motion of their flowering, I imagined it as the quick and thoughtless movement of the head, with coquettish glance and contracted eyes, of a young girl in white, dreamy and alive.”

            —Part One, Combray, “Swann in Love”

Hermes:

I am in the midst of the great adventure of reading Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, nearly finished with Lydia Davis’s translation of Volume One, Swann’s Way.

“What ravishes me is his metaphors,” I say to Helen.

“Ah, yes,” she says. “I returned to Proust when America invaded Iraq. An antidote. Before that, I’d never made it through more than 40 pages.”

“Same with me. Ouch!” I say as the acupuncture needle pierces my thigh. “But this time I’m finally ready for him.”

“I read ten pages a day,” she says. “And got through about 1,000 pages.” She finishes with two needles near my ankles. “What stayed with me is his definition of genius: ‘to transpose and transform.’ It sounds trivial to use this as an example, but I thought of that watching a documentary on Coco Chanel. Do you know where she got the idea of those boxy jackets with trim?”

“Let me guess. From military jackets?”

“No. From a bellboy in front of an Austrian hotel where she was staying. He wore a little Tyrolean jacket.”

“That’s it! She transposed and transformed the design.”

She leaves me to float down the river of meditation.

I think of the dinner the night before on our friends’ boat on the Seine, of the meal Jeannette created for the seven of us.

Daedalus: the craftsman:

This perspective, this genre, close first person, subjective stream of consciousness, stories in poetic prose, memories of the artist’s life: this is it for me. Memories told through the senses, things, the real.

The tug back to writing fiction, reading Proust.

Yet wanting to continue writing about the present.

How to braid the past and the present? What to call these pieces, bits, threads?

“When all of that was finished, there came a work of art composed expressly for us, but more particularly dedicated to my father who was so fond of it, a chocolate custard, the product of Francoise’s personal inspiration and attention, ephemeral and light as an occasional piece into which she put all her talent. If anyone had refused to taste it, saying: “I’m finished, I’m not hungry any more,” that person would immediately have been relegated to the rank of those barbarians who, even in a gift an artist makes them of one of his works, scrutinize its weight and its material when the only things of value in it are its intention and its signature. To leave even a single drop of it on the plate would have been to display the same impoliteness as to stand up before the end of a piece under the very nose of the composer.”

            --Part One, Combray, in “Swann’s Way” 

Ares: Proust’s possessions:

In Proust’s room at the Musée Carnavalet, the following furniture and objects are gathered from the three successive homes he held in Paris after the death of his parents: 102 Boulevard Haussmann (December 1906-June 1919):

8 bis, rue Laurent Pichat (July-September 1919);

44, rue Hamelin (October 1919-16 November 1922). 

Lit (bed)

Bureau (desk)

Bibliothèque (library)

Chaise longue (chaise lounge)

Tapis (rug)

Portrait du docteur Adrien Proust, père de l'écrivain, par Louise Brouardel (portrait of Doctor Adrien Proust, father of the writer)

Plaque de jade, cadeau de la comtesse de Nouailles (jade plaque, gift of the countess of N.)

Glace à main (hand mirror)

Brosse avec monogramme en argent (brush with silver monogram)

Épingle de cravate, en or et corail, par Cartier (gold and coral tie pin)

Plateau en métal argenté (silver metal tray)

Canne, cadeau du marquis d’Albuféra (cane, gift of marquis d’Albuféra)

Pelisse en loutre (exposée occasionellement) (an otter fur coat (occasionally displayed))

            --Don de M. Jacques Guérin, 1973

Fauteuil (chair)

Paravent (screen)

Table de chevet (bedside table) 

Table de nuit à abattants (bedside table with flaps) 

Lampe (lamp)

Miroir (mirror)

Essuie-plumes en laiton (brass feather duster)

Plumier en palissandre (rosewood pencil box) 

Encrier (inkwell)

Montre gousset (pocket watch) 

Épingle de cravate ornie d’une perle (tie pin with a pearl)

Agenda, cadeau de Mme Straus (calendar, gift of M. S.)

Brosse de toilette en ivoire (ivory clothing brush)

Brosse à chapeau en ébène (ebony hat brush)

Brosse à chapeau en palissandre (rosewood cap brush)

Chausse-pied en ivoire (ivory shoe horn)

“L’Offrande à L’Amour” groupe en porcelaine de Meissen, d’ après Fragonard

            --Don de Mme Odile Gerandan, en souvenir de Céleste Albaret, sa mère

But it is not until I visit the Musée Carnavalet a second time that I see the objects that mean the most to me: a stack of notebooks on the shelves of the bedside table, medium size with lightweight cardboard covers, like the ones that Moleskin makes. They are probably facsimiles, but I instantly know that I’ll settle on this size, this kind, after all my experiments with writing notebooks.

Athena:

After his parents died, Proust withdrew more and more from the world. He was enabled to do so because of his inherited wealth, what Virginia Woolf advised writers to have: a room of one’s own and 500 pounds a year.

“What is meant by 'reality'? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable--now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech--and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us. So at least I infer from reading LEAR or EMMA or LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU. For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life. Those are the enviable people who live at enmity with unreality; and those are the pitiable who are knocked on the head by the thing done without knowing or caring. So that when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.”

            —Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”

Dionysus:

Proust on being possessed by erotic love: 

“Swann remained there, disconsolate, embarrassed and yet happy, with this envelope which Odette had handed over to him quite fearlessly, so absolute was her confidence in his discretion, but through the transparent glazing of which was revealed to him, along with the secret of an incident which he would never have believed it possible to discover, a little of Odette’s life, as in a narrow illuminated section cut directly out of the unknown. Then his jealousy had an independent, selfish vitality, voracious for anything that would feed it, even at Swann’s own expense. Now it had something to feed on and Swann was going to be able to begin worrying each day over the visitors Odette might have received at about five o’clock, and begin trying to learn where Forcheville had been at that hour…. His jealousy, like an octopus that casts a first, then a second, then a third mooring, attached itself solidly first to that time, five o’clock in the afternoon, then to another, then to yet another.”

            —Part Two, Swann in Love, “Swann’s Way”

Aphrodite:

Proust as (literary) aphrodisiac:

"Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that! I cry. And at the moment such is the astonishing vibration and saturation that he procures--there's something sexual in it--that I feel I can write like that, and seize my pen and then I can't write like that.... How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped--and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp."

            --Virginia Woolf (before she wrote Mrs. Dalloway)

Demeter:

Proust, whose health was delicate most of his life. In the room at the Carnavalet, his silver metal tray is powdered white from the medicine he took for his asthma.

Apollo:

Proust, who circulated in the fashionable Paris salons of the early twentieth century, before retiring from social life to write during most of his waking hours the last fifteen years of his life.

What an unerring eye he has for the snobbery, falsities and malice of the hostesses, courtesans and aristocratic gentlemen of his social circles.

“It was after dinner at the Verdurins’. Either because Forcheville, feeling that Saniette, his brother-in-law, was not in favor in their house, wanted to use him as a whipping boy and shine in front of them at his expense, or because he had been irritated by a clumsy remark which Saniette had just made to him and which, in fact, had gone unnoticed by those present, who were not aware of the unpleasant allusion it might contain quite contrary to the intentions of the one who had uttered it without any malice, or finally because he had been looking for an opportunity to induce them to banish from the house someone who was too well acquainted with him and whom he knew to be so refined that he felt embarrassed at certain moments merely by his presence, Forcheville answered this clumsy remark of Saniette’s with such coarseness, hurling insults at him, and emboldened, as he shouted, by Saniette’s pain, his dismay, his entreaties, that the wretched man, after asking Mme. Verdurin if he ought to stay, and receiving no answer, had left the house stammering, tears in his eyes. Odette had watched this scene impassively, but when the door closed on Saniette, lowering as it were by several notches her face’s habitual expression, so as to be able to find herself, in her baseness, on an equal footing with Forcheville, she had put a sparkle in her eyes with a sly smile of congratulations for the audacity he had shown, of mockery for the man who had been its victim; she had cast him a glance of complicity in evil which was so clearly intended to say: “That finished him off, or I’m very much mistaken. Did you see how pathetic he looked? He was actually crying,” that Forcheville, when his eyes met that glance, sobering in a moment from the anger or simulation of anger which still warmed him, smiled and answered:

            “He needed only to be friendly, and he would still be here. A good rebuke does a man no harm at any age.””

            —Part Two, Swann in Love, “Swann’s Way”

  

Zeus:

Like most great geniuses, Proust had profound mystical vision. I think of William Blake, of W. B. Yeats, of Albert Einstein, who said, “We can only draw lines after Him.” 

“I find the Celtic belief very reasonable, that the souls of those we have lost are held captive in some inferior creature, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, effectively lost to us until the day, which for many never comes, when we happen to pass close to the tree, come into possession of the object that is their prison. Then they quiver, they call out to us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and they return to live with us."

“It is the same with our past. It is a waste of effort for us to try to summon it, all the exertions of our intelligence are useless. The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach, in some material object (in the sensation that this material object would give us) which we do not suspect. It depends on chance whether we encounter this object before we die, or do not encounter it.” 

            —Part 1, Combray, “Swann’s Way”

Hermes:

“The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

            --Marcel Proust