Marcel Proust and The illusion of Time

the sense of being left behind whilst moving forward backwards and forwards

Two things happened this week. One: I no longer believe in time, or that I believe in it as a physical property. In a Waking Up mediation, Stephan Bodian candidly said that ‘we only experience the present - and things change in our present. When we notice more things that are changing the slower time seems to pass, when we notice fewer things that are changing the quicker time seems to pass. Or, for both cases, it feels like it does. But it’s just the present in a state of impermanence.’

What a cunt - that really fucked me over. But I am a complete believer.

So, one notices the changes in their body first and foremost, your body changes more between ages 10 to 20 compared to 20 to 30 - hence your teens passes more slowly than your twenties, just as childhood felt like it lasted forever. Just as, the past entropically can never be recreated, but reality can change in a way to bring back narratives that have occurred before - as everyone’s familiar with the seasons of life, history repeating itself. 

People say you can’t travel back in time - yet we have memories? Suddenly, all comes clear in Tenet with why Christopher Nolan marries the concept of reversing entropy with time travel.

That new enlightenment combined with the second discovery this week: I’m really getting into Proust’s 4,000 page autobiography - In Search of Lost Time - playing with themes of involuntary memory, random contingencies that suddenly send us back into the past, uncovering memories that were lost; how the recalling of a memory is like trying to catch smoke - the idea exists in principle, but in practice it always seems impossible, despite the ability to keep trying, you open your hands - even with anticipation - and just like that, poof, no smoke. 

In Search of Lost Time, combined with the fact I see my perception of reality as tides of memories, potentialities, experiences both old and new, coming in and out of my immediate experiences - just as the waves wash up on the shore, and recede back into the vast ocean-like collective unconscious.

I walk along the streets of Cambridge, in my new college Trinity Hall - not to be mistaken with Trinity College, Oxford - a place I used to call home. With each step, I’m slowly realising I’m rewriting my memories, I retell stories of my tales at Oxford using Cambridge jargon, when I don’t think about it directly, I swear to God I always studied here, only at my periphery lies my personal history - Oxford - sitting there, repressed, it lays dormant. The members of staff I work with are the same staff members who made me feel safe at Oxford - right? I walk down the streets, the same streets I’ve been walking down for years, the only slightest thing seems to have changed - like a dream where you know there’s the slightest thing off - but you can’t quite put your finger on it, continuing to believe it is as reality. The same conversations with the same students, the same stories being told to visiting schools, the same topics discussed over podcasts from the inside. I swear I’ve been here this whole time.

An old friend from uni, Jo, my dance partner, a teacher now, visited with her school to our college earlier this week, and she said how ‘it felt like going back in time, eating in the dining hall, walking across the college grounds.’ I eat in the dining hall and it feels like the day is today.

Living in Cambridge now, working at a new college, reading in the library, studying for my Psychotherapy course, in so many ways nothings changed from uni - time has frozen, it’s going backwards, it’s obviously going forwards - things have completely changed and they haven’t.

I am being lost in time - like tears in rain. I feel absolutely terrified of the ever-changing present. Tentatively breast-stroking through impermanence.

I believe my time in Cambridge is the physical enactment of Proust’s - In Search of Lost Time.

The anchor that grounds me is the job I have to do, a pioneer once again, as I entered the old town as l’étranger, my own Ashitaka unintentionally crossing paths with Princess Mononoke - I knew that if I wasn’t going to do the podcast no one else will - and now that it’s about to be launched, I’ll stay till the jobs done. Steady the boat against the winds of time, both past and present, ignore the sirens call, keeping a look out for lighthouses - whether that’s moving forwards in time or backwards - I’ll be trying to my keep hand steady, holding my compass tightly.

---

17/09/24

*you can tell it’s September.