{"id":1428,"date":"2014-09-29T07:03:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T07:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2014-10-23T15:23:12","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T05:23:12","slug":"eighteen-what-we-do-not-wholly-possess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1428","title":{"rendered":"eighteen (what we do not wholly possess)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"balcony-with-champagne\"<\/a>Marcel Proust once wrote: One only loves that which one does not entirely possess*<\/em>. And Proust, as you know, has often been mistaken for a philosopher. Or a relationship advisor. He was French, after all, and we often confused ‘being\u00a0French’ with a capacity for understanding love.<\/p>\n

We had thought that making love in Paris\u00a0would bring us closer together. In the departure lounge, we drank champagne. I was delirious, a little mad. I had never believed it would happen, but there we were. Just the smell of your neck made me drunk.<\/p>\n

It was a long flight, with a five-hour stopover in some godforsaken place where there was no relief from the glare of the fluorescent lights.<\/p>\n

It took an hour to get out of the airport, and another to get from the airport to our hotel. But finally we had arrived in Paris. Paris!<\/p>\n

We showered and put on our robes. From the window of our hotel we could see the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts. There was champagne, and cheese, and fruit. Figs, perhaps, or pears. You look tired, in the photograph, and so do I. But we were happy then.<\/p>\n

We made love. Who wouldn’t? It was Paris, after all, and we had come so far.<\/p>\n

I had not read Proust, then, and even if I had, I doubt I would have understood. I\u00a0welcomed\u00a0you into\u00a0me the way a house–windows and doors thrown open–welcomes\u00a0wind and light. You warmed the empty rooms. Lifted the curtains and let them fall. You possessed\u00a0me, entirely. Every breath and every bone.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0love could have survived such furious\u00a0and unforgiving light?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

*The translation of Proust’s phrase is by Anne Carson, and is included in her poem, ‘The Albertine Workout’, published in the London Review of Books<\/a>. It it from Volume 5, La Prisonni\u00e8re<\/em>\u00a0(The Captive).\u00a0It has also been translated, by Moncrieff and Hudson, as:\u00a0[Love] survives only if some part remains for it to conquer. We love only what we do not wholly possess<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcel Proust once wrote: One only loves that which one does not entirely possess*. And Proust, as you know, has often been mistaken for a philosopher. Or a relationship advisor. He was French, after all, and we often confused ‘being\u00a0French’ with a capacity for understanding love. We had thought that making love in Paris\u00a0would bring…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[725,167,288],"tags":[722,727,790,788,728,787,789],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-200-words-200-days","category-on-writing","category-short-works","tag-200-days","tag-200-words","tag-la-prisonniere","tag-marcel-proust","tag-microfiction","tag-paris","tag-the-captive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-n2","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/balcony-with-champagne.jpg?fit=1224%2C1632","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1431,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}