Memories and milestones

My morning walk takes me to the edge of the sea. In the early morning before the sunrise, the whole world is drenched in the scent of spring flowers. There is enough light in this time of the year to see the sky, morning mist and faraway hills in the distance with astonishing clarity. The first streaks of light in the morning play upon my curtains against the bedroom windows. The windowpanes are reflected with the light ochre colour from the sky. I rarely listen to the wireless while I lie on my bed in the morning.

Camellias in my garden. It's one of my favourite flowers that I look forward to most in every spring. The colour is absolutely sensational pink! 

Xavier de Maistre's Journey Around My Bedroom, first published in 1794.

But the early mornings on the weekends are very special as there is no demand and no frenzy of distraction. It gives me extra time in bed to read a few pages of a book on my bedside table. I have been reading “A Journey around my room” by Xavier de Maistre. I am quite dazzled by his poetic meditation on his surrounding.

After he was placed under house arrest in 1790 for forty two days over a duelling incident, Count Xavier de Maistre, a twenty seven years old Savoyard officer, who was stationed in Turin, starts to meditate on things that are in his immediate surroundings and it causes him a surprise and a little amusement. What fascinating to me is that his use of familiar objects around his room as a catalyst for visionary meditation (more similar to the mystical contemplation than the digital gaze), within which the humdrum of his life is transfigured.  

Spending 42 days under house arrest for dueling, the writer, Xavier de Maistre passed the time by meditating on the familiar objects and furniture around his room. It is a situation which we can all relate to at the moment in our time of lock down.  

Xavier de Maistre wrote:

“Once you’ve left my armchair, walking towards the north, you come into view of my bed, which his placed at the far end of my room: it’s a most agreeable sight. It is situated in the most pleasant spot imaginable: the first rays of the sun come to disport themselves in my bed curtains…I can hear the indistinct twittering of the swallows who have taken over the roof of the house and the other birds who live in the elms: then, a thousand cheerful ideas fill my mind; and nobody, in the whole world, wakes up in such a pleasant and peaceful way as I do.

I must confess that I love to bask in these sweet moments, and that I always prolong as much as possibly can the pleasure of meditating in the snug warmth of my bed. Is there any theatre which arouses the imagination more, or awakens more…

A bed sees us born, and sees us die. It is the ever changing scene upon which the human race play by turns interesting dramas, laughable farces, and fearful tragedies. It is a cradle decked with flowers. A throne of love. A sepulchre.”

 After my breakfast, I love walking around the garden and picking flowers for the house in the early morning when my soul longs for the natural beauty. Depending on my mood I would often do Japanese floral arrangements or simply put them in colourful vases around the house. Tulips look beautiful just as they are if you cut them into a small jug or the best result is in the white pottery vase. Flowers are my guardian angels of life although they are not recommended by my doctor for they exacerbate my asthma. But they offer me so much consolation to my body and spirit with their beauty.

When the weather becomes slightly warmer, I have a craving for something less substantial than a proper lunch. My mother used to make me a soft drink when I was young after a period of asthma attack; a drink that brought an indescribable effluence of temptation to an invalid. It is soothing and delicious at the same time. The recipe consists of one avocado, two scoops of vanilla ice-cream, one and half a cup of milk and ice cubes (optional) and mix them all together in a blender.

My favourite avocado juice, a drink from my childhood, which my mother made for me during my convalescence from asthma. Recipe: 1 avocado, 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream, 1 1/2 cups of milk, and 5 ice cubes (optional) into a blender. 

The other day I made myself this drink after sitting out in the garden alone, listening to the birdsong and drinking avocado juice, based on my mother’s recipe, which took me back to my innocent childhood. Looking back through the years, I remembered how secured and protected my childhood was. Yes, I have been most fortunate. But the most potent and permanent guiding influence had been that of my grandparents, who with their passionate learning, their intelligence and rare humanity and their love, had saved me from so many pitfalls. 

When our lives are suspended during this unprecedented crisis, we are bound to be introspective to reach back to a happier time in the past. We talk to our friends and families by using the digital technology which enables us to uplift each other's spirits and reassure one another. Our lives suddenly seem full of reminiscences. “Remembrance of things past” always brings me back to Proust.

The French are well known for saying about their beloved author, Proust: “Don’t make a saint of him”.  But I disregarded their advice and gave Proust a special place or a shrine in my house. I would like to spend every day of my life in his aura of wisdom. I admire him for getting to the core of things and having a talent to recognise it. I used to read him for entirely different reasons; the expansiveness of his mind, his sinuous and labyrinthine sentences and how cleverly he turns his phrases. But now, I read him because his writing reinforces my life. He had the intellectual vision that gets to the centre of things and anything else is a waste of time to him. He had a gift to capture a moment and that moment stays with you for a long time. 

One particular episode that stays with me in À la recherche du temps perdu is set in the fictional garrison town of Doncières. The story is based on the blossoming friendship between the narrator Marcel, a civilian visitor at the garrison, and his handsome friend, Robert de Saint-Loup who is a cavalry officer. They both are in their early twenties. On his last morning at Doncières, Marcel had gone down to the barracks to say goodbye to Robert. Before Marcel reached to his destination, he saw Robert and his friend driving out of the gates in a dog-cart “at full speed, without a smile, without moving a muscle of his face, he confined himself to keeping his hand raised for a minute to the peak of his cap…” 


Marcel took off his hat to ask his friend to offer him a lift but Robert drove on without a glance at his friend. Later, in Paris, still perplexed by this extraordinary incident, Marcel tactfully approached the subject with Robert. The latter replied “Don’t speak about it…I was so sorry. I passed you just outside the barracks, but I couldn’t stop because I was late already. I assure you, I felt quite wretched about it.” Marcel then realised the insincerity of his friend and he wrote, “So he had recognised me! I saw again in my mind the wholly impersonal salute which he had given me, raising his hand to his cap, without a glance to indicate that he knew me, without a gesture to shew that he was sorry he could not stop.”

Everything is so calm and quiet as if all of our lives have been suspended. The poet, Patrick Kavanagh said:  “To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime's experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.”

I think we all can associate with Marcel’s feeling of being let down when friendship becomes a disappointment. This kind of incident can occur to everyone when we realise that the relationship that we invested for friendship turns out to be superficial and nothing more than a fair-weather acquaintance. In the end, we receive nothing but disappointment and alienation from such friendship. There is no other writer like Proust who really shows us what it is like to experience this kind of disappointment. It makes us realise that what once was will never be again. As the saying goes, “when a house of cards tumbles, it falls fast”. We all have known or met a friend like Robert who would say "I'll stand by you" but when the hour of need has arrived, he simply vanishes.

‘Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single

Thought of which the sea would not be part’. Hermann Broch, The Spell

I have been counting the painted stones on the sides of the path in the woods that lead to an empty field by the sea. They are all painted in bright and cheerful colours. Are they a symbol of hope and optimism in these challenging times? Does a particular colour represent a sign of gratitude or is it an alternative way saying thank you to so many good Samaritans in the village?

We shall never know who placed these painted stones hidden among the trees. Are they signs of shared strength and symbols of hope or talismans to deflect misfortune and avert harm, plague or famine? 

Whatever the motive was, I cannot help but admiring the creative gestures of placing these painted stones randomly and anonymously along the path. Perhaps, we should encourage more of these genuine gestures with the hope to brighten up our days. They are purely voluntary by those who behold no name and no status. The participants remain unseen and unknown in spite of the depth of their imaginative creations. 

It is a breath of fresh air in the days of news media that often uses the forced feel good stories to detract us from the centre of things. I believe a private expression of gratitude to a known individual would be more gratefully received. When it comes to gratitude, similar to Kavangah’s concept of the poetic experience, “it is depth that counts, not width.” So, next time when I walk on the path, I might place a painted stone in an obscure corner as a gesture of my gratitude, and with any luck, no one will ever find out who placed it there. Little things like stones but I shall remember them long after much else has been forgotten.