Involuntary Memory in Oregon

I, too, find that I buy less and less during travels, and cherish photos and memories more than ever.

When my youngest son was learning (or should I say trying to learn) the French Horn, he practiced a piece called "Variations." His older brother opined that most of the variations were involuntary.

Is involunary memory like that? My Significant Other is writing his memoir of growing up during World War II and especially the days at the end of the war when the Russian army invaded their town and fighting broke out. As he writes and researches the history of the period, more and more memories return. Like going to an old boarded up well and discovering clear potable water. And now the memories come, bringing forth even more memories. It's an amazing experience, even to watch. And there is also the difference in what he remembers and what a younger sister recalls.

I found this blog which mentions memory in Proust, and thought you should read it, too.

http://geopolicraticus.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/unintended-memories/

It was tempting to call the post, Reading Proust in Oregon

The Other Odette

Remembrance of a Proust Lecture

Oops! The lecture has come and gone. Not likely I would have come all the way from Foxborough. Once, in the depths of a Chicago winter very much like the current one (cold, cold, cold), I dragged my significant other through the snow to a lecture at Northwestern University about Proust.

My god, was it cold!

The professor said we should all read Proust. And I came home and did. From cover to cover.

And here I am again, years later. Sort of bogged down with the Duchess of Guermantes and the narrator's not very subtle (today we would call it stalking) arranging to run into her on her walks and business about town. Just reading the magazines and newspapers that come into the house is daunting, and then there's the books. But I am making progress.

Oh yes! The lecture: http://philostream.blogspot.com/2008/02/philo-event-8-philosophy-and-literature.html

Isn't he handsome in a European professorial kind of way? I have a Frenchman in my latest novel, Festival Madness, which I'll start flogging soon.

Alors,

Odette