To exist out of time is to deny the linearity of life. You dip in and out of constant nostalgia even though that is not a life you have ever lived, nor do you think you will ever live that life.
Soon, there will be a lot of leaving behind, and the “rehearsal” of “Proustian” loss keeps me occupied day in and day out.
I never cared for the oozing sweetness of a “safeda” mango, because I knew that come April, come summer, that softer species of mango will find its way to my palate. But now, every drop of its “Ras” is something I want to savour already although I can very well have the mango whenever I want.
The pandemic has changed something fundamentally, something that Aciman has felt regardless of the pandemic as he
thinks of missing Alexandria even before departing for his life in Paris or New York. Alexandria is unlivable for him but a future in Paris is all he can think about. There is a constant sense of loss, time lapsing into things past and the realisation of every moment when time snaps it’s linear connections.
I thought memories would come when I’d be old, greying old. But that isn’t the case anymore; In fact, I can see this yearning of the past at every other corner— in conversations, on social media, in literature. Everything is a repitition, every conversation about nostagia, even present nostalgia. History, all of a sudden, has become so important, at least for the Indian subcontinent and those colonised by the British. There is rampant archiving. Many people have taken it upon themselves to document India's lost history.
But I digress from what Aciman elaborates: that artists live in a time that is not unreal but irreal, a time they can conjure with literature and even live in it, because this time belongs to Henri Bergson’s “duré” and has nothing to do with what’s going on around.
Nevertheless, this beautiful collection has given me a very curious entry into the world of French cinema, especially that of Eric Rohmer’s!
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