Sunday, May 24, 2020

If Time Were Not a Moving Thing


With so much time on my hands these days I  go through books faster than usual.   I had read the book "Time and Again" by Jack Finney a few years ago. I had forgotten that I had read it and started to re-read it just last week and then remembered how I had found it somewhat intense and a bit claustrophobic. It is a science fiction book about an artist being selected to create time travel with his imagination/self-hypnosis and this will be used by the government to change what they want to change in the past. It was a well-constructed novel based on factual historical events in New York in the late 1800s.  There was a rumor that the story was going to be made into a movie by Robert Redford, but that fell through.

Now, I have turned to read "Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov because...well, why not go back in time with a great author? It is an autobiography.  He begins recreating his first impressions of his life way back into toddler-hood. What an impressive memory he has. It reveals lovely patterns of existence and symbolism in the context of the turn of the Century in Russia in a wealthy family.  In the prologue he explains that all of this was edited by intense give and take from older siblings and other friends who seem to remember some of it far differently than he does.  

" I have journeyed back in thought---with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went---to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits."

That is the fugitive of time.  We see one creative side and another set of eyes that passed with us through that same window will throw cold water on that memory washing away a rosy color from our glasses and coming up with evidence of something very different.  It is almost as if our memories of our past life are "but a dream."

OK. ENOUGH with the song lyrics.

Nabokov also said "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."  Well with that depressing perspective I will admit I can now move forward with fewer expectations on the importance of my leaving a memory or even a footprint!

"Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison. In probing my childhood (which is the next best to probing one’s eternity) I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory a slippery hold."  Nabakov again.


Above is a photo looking back to our dock, a memory for this year. Our first venture across the water in almost a year since the recreational boating lock-down was lifted this holiday weekend.  My husband was thrilled and I brought a book in case he had luck at his old fishing hole.

18 comments:

  1. Also a fan of Nabokov here, although I haven't read him in ages. I wrote at least one paper on him when working on my Masters, so I guess I felt like I knew him better than other people I read.

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  2. This post just might be a little too deep for me and my foggy Sunday morning brain.
    Question: Is time in the time of COVID-19 different than otherwise time? It does feel like it is.

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  3. Nice photo and place to be. I have no idea why boating was banned so many places since it seems very unlikely place to get the virus unless it's one of the paid fishing boats.

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    1. In our neck of the woods the folks tend to raft up, open a case of beer and party hearty.

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    2. In Oregon, it's that they put their boat on the water and fish. Social distancing happens naturally lol

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  4. Wonderful photo and post. I hope y'all had a good time, reading, fishing, being outdoors.

    I knew I grew with hard times. Yet, I thought of my childhood as mainly happy. Therapy ruined all that. I'm not anti-therapy. I am anti-thoughtless therapists that have no skill to honor a person's good memories. They can change the memory as badly as others that tell a different verson of a person's experiences.

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  5. Enjoy the latest freedom!

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  6. Nice! I do hope you have time to read and that you will be having fresh caught fish tonight. Thanks for the quotes from that book. Maybe I'll pick it up once the library opens up again. :-)

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  7. I time traveled back to 1896 with Caleb Carr in "The Alienist". A great trip!

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  8. That's a thought provoking post, Tabor. When I've shared my memoirs with my siblings I've been interested by the difference of perceptions of siblings who remember things differently. How four of us agree that we had happy childhoods and a fifth says we were poor and miserable, who says the grandmother we four adored was horrible. Sorry, I drifted off the 'Time' subject.

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    1. Even if your fifth sibling is correct how wonderful that the four of you have good memories.

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  9. Very deep stuff.

    Time has just kept on here, work and things breaking and bills coming due and very little to pay and work again. Treadmill. How i dislike the treadmill.

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  10. For some reason I have been reading considerably less than is normal for me -- probably related to my eyes being bothersome.

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  11. I confess I've never read Nabokov, and I thought I was well-read before I stopped having time to read. I also confess I'm happy to see you are still blogging. I'm sporadic, but sticking with it as much as I can. It's cheap therapy, right? I'm also glad to see you are staying well and healthy through these crazy times which truly seem straight out of a novel.

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  12. Library branches open this coming week.

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  13. Well nothing in particular except to say that it is said for every new book read you should read an old book already read in between, or even 1 to three, in which order you make up your own mind.

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    1. Interesting. Never heard of that.

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Take your time...take a deep breath...then hit me with your best shot.