A La Recherche...

...time is not, pace Proust, ever actually lost. It is there, somewhere, waiting to be found.

I am, though, of the view that dear T S Eliot had it spot on when he wrote "If all time is eternally present, All time is unredeemable" and later "Footfalls echo in the memory..." and so forth.

But then, to be fair, the much-haunted Marcel was referring to 'times' - people, places, events, loves and loses - not 'time' as a thing in itself - the fell mistress of Fate and eventual teller of our mortality. (Not quite sure why Australian Shiraz always makes one so maudlin but, there you have it, it does.)

Even so, such 'times' are never truly lost as in obliterated or forgotten. For any but the dullest of souls, epiphany moments of love (to take one example of significant human life) rest forever in some part of one's remembrance and heart. The people (the lovers) may be long gone and removed from active contact, but their imprint remains - they have marked the soul and the spirit in some measure and that sign is indelible.

The pair of us (Bro. and I) happen to have near photographic memories and can still visibly picture particular intimacies from many years past - certain smiles, caresses, a look in the eye, a moment of ecstasy or of privacy. This is not to overburden such moments with more import than human kind wishes them to have - it is merely to report that the human archive is by that much the more enriched.

I am minded of this for Bro. Charles telephoned this evening to report that he had, by felicitous chance, at some peculiar gathering these management consultants attend ('Partnership Now: the New Imperative' - or some such nonsense) bumped into a woman long-ago loved and seemingly lost.

It was with a certain awe that he recounted how his once paramour now had grown-up children with careers of their own. (Tempus fugit not half - as dear 'Fluff' would have said.) When he had known her there were no children. He had sufficiently kept up over the years to know that she had had babies, but to be told (a check on the calendar would have been sufficient confirmation, of course) that these infants were now themselves fully-functioning adults, was a shock to the system requiring at least a half-bottle of good malt. (On that Bro. Charles and I are agreed - when the chips are down, or up, or even half-way to somewhere, there is nothing beats a good malt.)

Skipping the details and cutting to the chase - as we both prefer - Bro. Charles informed me that said personage from the past is now living semi-detached [vis a vis relationship] in a detached [vis a vis residence] cottage, with but two cats and a half-envisaged garden for company.

Should he - he had to enquire - consider abandoning all for a fervent yet fleeting reunion with this wondrous past? Wise counsel, of course, was for the no. (There is a reason that ships pass in the night - generally that they are heading in different directions. They have a course that each has chosen and to which each must accede.)

There was though - and hurrah for that - a part of this sensible cleric that would urge Charlie to fire up the soul, fuel up the 4x4, and drive like the wind through the night to take one more moment from the past for the present and no matter what is or is not unredeemable.