Bonne Anniversaire

It's his birthday today. Old Marcel. He'd be 136 years old if he hadn't died. Perhaps today would be a good day to take stock of this task we've collectively set for ourselves. I for one have been lagging. It's been a month and no Proust. Just cookbooks and books about babies. I keep putting it off and don't know when I'll pick it up again. In the shadow of young girls in flower was the first Proust I ever considered reading. I saw a newly issued edition in a bookstore and found the cover so lovely, the title so haunting, that I bought it on a whim, realizing only later that I should probably read the first book before the second. Once so eager to embark upon a literary endeavor that I cast all logic aside in favor of aesthetic fulfillment, now I can't muster the gusto to even begin the second one after the first. But maybe today is the day. Maybe it has to be. Maybe we'll all get a second wind. And maybe we'll be the better for it -- who can say what gifts Marcel Proust will bestow upon his faithful on this, his B-day?

Prouststorm

Travelers passing through the northern shore of France would often report strange storms that would come - seemingly - from no where. On cold days the pressure would dramatically shift and a huge gust of hot air would rush at the traveler. Inexplicably the perfume of honeysuckles and rose water would fill his nostrils and then - just as he felt he was in a warm and fragrant paradise thousands of pages of prose (usually in six volumes but sometimes only in five - but always hard bound.... VERY hard bound) would fall on the unlucky soul. If he survived the Prouststorm he would live on only as a husk of his former self rattling on and on about girls he never dated without end.