– I once had a significant other who could easily have stepped out of a Nancy Mitford novel, or a children’s book. Among other things, it was her custom to anthropomorphize everything she ran across. Animals, books, housewares, pieces of furniture: all were endowed with personalities in her high-flying mind. I’d never done that kind of thing myself, my natural sense of fantasy being deficient to the point of nonexistence (I must have been a painfully literal child). Close proximity to so fantastic a person eventually gave me an appreciation for her flights of fancy, though, and to this day I occasionally catch myself thinking in something of the same way. As I walked home this morning from the bagel store, I noticed that the sidewalks were lined with discarded Christmas trees, and I thought: Oh, poor things! Were they well lit and handsomely trimmed? Did they look down on great piles of beautifully wrapped presents? Are they cold and lonely now? Or do they feel fulfilled?
– At breakfast with Our Girl the other day, my memory abruptly disgorged a long-lost fact: Arthur Rubinstein, the classical pianist, reread all of Proust, including George Painter’s two-volume biography, in the year before he went blind. I can’t recall whether he knew for sure that his sight was going or merely had a premonition of trouble ahead, but I do know he later declared himself to have been deeply satisfied by the way he’d spent his last sighted months.
I wonder what I’d do in like circumstances. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to read anything at all, though I can see why someone else might want to do so, reading with the eyes being an experience utterly different from “reading” with the ears. (I’ve never listened to an entire book from cover to cover–I get too impatient.) But if not A la recherche du temps perdu, then what? I suppose the obvious thing would be to hit the museums one more time. On the other hand, I could imagine finding that too painful, knowing that I’d soon be deprived of such experiences together. And if I did it anyway, would I try to see as many masterpieces as possible, or concentrate on a few special favorites in the hopes of retaining them in my mind for a little while longer?
I suppose a philosopher might choose instead to continue his normal life, endeavoring to savor each day’s ordinary experiences to the fullest. Alas, I’m not a philosopher, merely a greedy aesthete who’d take a Balanchine ballet over a Balanchine-blue sky any day of the week. Does that mean I live my life once removed from the “real” world? Or are the aesthetic experiences of which the life of art is constituted as “real” as blue skies and fiery orange sunsets?