for Wendy, who’s eyes glowed golden when she listened
over a late lunch:
after twenty-eight years, Proust, I said, has given me the answer to essentially everything
we’d met, a friend and I, over a late lunch, and I was keeping her abreast
he says your impressions are your only Truth, I said, what wells from the core of you, instinct, is your only sure reality, your fount of Truth, your work of art, its representation, is your duty to the world, to partake in the community that has found the way to do it is your mission, he says it is a most difficult path to follow, and most eschew it, gesundheit
but, he says, without it your unique contribution to what we can ever know as Truth will be lost, a resplendent soul, all souls of course are resplendent, returned to merely and tragically dust
I’m inspired to write, I said, more than ever, I think like a divine purpose
twenty-eight years, I pointed out, I thought maybe never, though I suspected Proust if anyone might come pretty close, closer than anyone, if anyone could indeed supply such an answer
Proust talks about memory though, it is the issue that transports him, it is the nebulous area that, in a moment of suspension of time when a device, a detail, will provoke an evocation of another time, another place – a perfume, a sound, a taste, might do it, any sensuous reality – another dimension is exposed, where time and space have been effectively bypassed, again eschewed, again gesundheit, sidetracked, and you are transported
but what I want to talk about is miracles, what do you think of that, I asked, aware by now I might be being way too out there
that’s wonderful, she replied, her eyes were warm and to me glowed golden
that’s where I’m most comfortable, I continued, I want to describe that place where two realities coincide, this one and another, where everything is the same but different, where everything shimmers with a kind of heightened and iridescent energy, where usually there’s only real life
I want to show that these aren’t simply coincidences, unusual but isolated events, but rather revelations, answers to our most profound questions if we only allow, moments of patent lucidity and grace
how am I doing, I again cautiously asked, aware I might be flying off the handle, again be going too far
but there was no hint of any impatience, distress, incredulity, just warmth and thoughtful interest
I don’t think anyone else has ever written about that, I said, yes, the miraculous is inherent in any work of art but not as its prime subject, usually it is felt as its consequence, the source of the art itself, not its story
I felt on firmer ground now, back at the topic of writing, not the meaning of life, miracles, transcendence
I can do that, I said, I can do that, certain I could
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