Serendipity, Repetition, Thread
Have I become Binx Bolling?
I have read about 2/3 of The Moviegoer, and is my search for meaning just a pale imitation of a book I read 25 or 30 years earlier?
Quote from tbe book: What is a repitition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has elapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanut in brittle. Last week, for example, I experienced an accidental repetition. I picked up a German language weekly in the library. In it I noticed an advertisement for Nivea Creme, showing a woman with a grainy face turned up to the sun.. Then I remembered that twenty years ago I saw the same advetisement in a magazine on my father's desk, the same woman, the same grainy face, the same Nivea Creme. The events of the intervening twenty years were neutralized, the thirty million deaths, the countless torturings, uprootings and wanderings to and fro. Nothing of consequence could have happened because Nivea Creme was exactly as it was before. There remained only time itself, like a yard of smooth peanut brittle.
I read this the day after I went searching for a creme for my mother-in-law. As we searched the shelves, I pointed out Nivea Creme. It was not what she was looking for, but I was told that she did indeed have Nivea Creme in her bathroom at home. (She was visiting us for the holiday.) Imagine my surprise when I read about Nivea Creme in a book written over 45 years ago. What does it all mean? Does it validate my search? Could Nivea Creme possibly have been lurking in the back of mind all these years, and I knew it was about to come up? I have a good memory, but not that good. And when I was a young man, I can assure you that Nivea Creme made no impression. So does it mean that my search is validated? Or, am I a pathetic, middle-aged man, imitating a book?
I wrote about serendipity a few days ago, and Percy's description of a repetition is much of what I was writing about. Repetition may be a better word than serendipity for what I am talking about, but before I read about Percy's repetition, I had come up with my own word: thread. I believe my own experience is a little different than Binx's. Binx is trying to defeat the malaise in his life, through devices like the repetition. In my own, I am looking for connection or meaning or God, and I am looking for a thread. Maybe it's all the same thing.
Besides the Nivea Creme incident, I have experienced two other threads recently. One with Brooke Shields and another with Southern mothers linked by Charleston, South Carolina.
I am not sure the Brooke Shields one is of any value to my search , but maybe it is. It started with my viewing, late at night, the now classic The Blue Lagoon, in which a 14-year-old Brooke romps around an island, half naked, with her hair pasted to her boobs. It did lead me to wonder about the life of Brooke Shields. Here she started at as a child/teenage sex symbol, only to morph into Suddenly Susan. Which one was she? Which one was closer to the real Brooke Shields? I thought. The next couple of days I heard about her feud with Tom Cruise, where he attacked her for using drugs to combat post-partem depression. This was the first I had heard of it. It led me to wonder, though, what kind of mother would Brooke be? Hell, for all I know, she may already be a mother. She is certainly old enough. So, is the thread over? Usually, when I become aware that there is a thread, it is over. Maybe not. It could be announced that she will be starring in a new movie, set in Charleston, playing the mother in an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel. Then she would be part of my next thread.
My first connection to Charleston is that my sister lives there, and I was thinking of her, because our brother was set to visit. I have tried unsuccessfully to reach her this weekend. But anytime I think of my family, I often think of my mother, now dead these past 32 years. The second connection was seeing the last half of The Prince of Tides, in which the mother is portrayed as a self-seeking woman, who is unable to help her children through crisis. The third mother in my trilogy of mothers, while not from Charleson, is the one portrayed in The Moviegoer. While not from Charleson, she is from the South, so close enough. I think both are needed to think of my mother. She had a hard time coping with the everyday rigors of family life. Let's just leave it at she sometimes let things go, not unlike the mother in The Prince of Tides. More mundane, for our family crises were not of the same order. Ours were much more ordinary, less dramatic, but still deep in their ordinary, everydayness. The mother in the Moviegoer, while a good mother, is still unable to be of much help to her son. So, in the end, this is perhaps the lesson of this thread, that mothers can lay the foundation, but beyond that are unable to help their sons find salvation. Perhaps that is too harsh, but I believe what I am trying to say, is that the journey I am on, while not unique, is lonely.
I have read about 2/3 of The Moviegoer, and is my search for meaning just a pale imitation of a book I read 25 or 30 years earlier?
Quote from tbe book: What is a repitition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has elapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanut in brittle. Last week, for example, I experienced an accidental repetition. I picked up a German language weekly in the library. In it I noticed an advertisement for Nivea Creme, showing a woman with a grainy face turned up to the sun.. Then I remembered that twenty years ago I saw the same advetisement in a magazine on my father's desk, the same woman, the same grainy face, the same Nivea Creme. The events of the intervening twenty years were neutralized, the thirty million deaths, the countless torturings, uprootings and wanderings to and fro. Nothing of consequence could have happened because Nivea Creme was exactly as it was before. There remained only time itself, like a yard of smooth peanut brittle.
I read this the day after I went searching for a creme for my mother-in-law. As we searched the shelves, I pointed out Nivea Creme. It was not what she was looking for, but I was told that she did indeed have Nivea Creme in her bathroom at home. (She was visiting us for the holiday.) Imagine my surprise when I read about Nivea Creme in a book written over 45 years ago. What does it all mean? Does it validate my search? Could Nivea Creme possibly have been lurking in the back of mind all these years, and I knew it was about to come up? I have a good memory, but not that good. And when I was a young man, I can assure you that Nivea Creme made no impression. So does it mean that my search is validated? Or, am I a pathetic, middle-aged man, imitating a book?
I wrote about serendipity a few days ago, and Percy's description of a repetition is much of what I was writing about. Repetition may be a better word than serendipity for what I am talking about, but before I read about Percy's repetition, I had come up with my own word: thread. I believe my own experience is a little different than Binx's. Binx is trying to defeat the malaise in his life, through devices like the repetition. In my own, I am looking for connection or meaning or God, and I am looking for a thread. Maybe it's all the same thing.
Besides the Nivea Creme incident, I have experienced two other threads recently. One with Brooke Shields and another with Southern mothers linked by Charleston, South Carolina.
I am not sure the Brooke Shields one is of any value to my search , but maybe it is. It started with my viewing, late at night, the now classic The Blue Lagoon, in which a 14-year-old Brooke romps around an island, half naked, with her hair pasted to her boobs. It did lead me to wonder about the life of Brooke Shields. Here she started at as a child/teenage sex symbol, only to morph into Suddenly Susan. Which one was she? Which one was closer to the real Brooke Shields? I thought. The next couple of days I heard about her feud with Tom Cruise, where he attacked her for using drugs to combat post-partem depression. This was the first I had heard of it. It led me to wonder, though, what kind of mother would Brooke be? Hell, for all I know, she may already be a mother. She is certainly old enough. So, is the thread over? Usually, when I become aware that there is a thread, it is over. Maybe not. It could be announced that she will be starring in a new movie, set in Charleston, playing the mother in an adaptation of a Pat Conroy novel. Then she would be part of my next thread.
My first connection to Charleston is that my sister lives there, and I was thinking of her, because our brother was set to visit. I have tried unsuccessfully to reach her this weekend. But anytime I think of my family, I often think of my mother, now dead these past 32 years. The second connection was seeing the last half of The Prince of Tides, in which the mother is portrayed as a self-seeking woman, who is unable to help her children through crisis. The third mother in my trilogy of mothers, while not from Charleson, is the one portrayed in The Moviegoer. While not from Charleson, she is from the South, so close enough. I think both are needed to think of my mother. She had a hard time coping with the everyday rigors of family life. Let's just leave it at she sometimes let things go, not unlike the mother in The Prince of Tides. More mundane, for our family crises were not of the same order. Ours were much more ordinary, less dramatic, but still deep in their ordinary, everydayness. The mother in the Moviegoer, while a good mother, is still unable to be of much help to her son. So, in the end, this is perhaps the lesson of this thread, that mothers can lay the foundation, but beyond that are unable to help their sons find salvation. Perhaps that is too harsh, but I believe what I am trying to say, is that the journey I am on, while not unique, is lonely.
