memory

I've taken to reading Marcel Proust again. Not every day, and not for long. Why? Because Proust reminds me of the subjective skew of recollection. He said, she said, I said, they said. Two individuals can share individual cups of coffee, or view a sunset, or walk a walk. Naturally (and organically, for that matter), their recollections of the shared experience are radically different. Infinitely different. We like to think otherwise, especially when being sentimental, but memory and recollection -- and thinking, if you will -- occupy idiosyncratic spheres that do not ever correspond or overlap perfectly. When you think of it (or feel of it), that's what literature purports to do: to re-create the event, the experience, the wonder, the immediacy, the "it." But it always falls short.