Carmine to the Core

Sitting here, watching the cardinals come to feed, it amazes me that the male never appears unless preceded by his mate. If I see three females, with their bright orange beaks, I can be sure three brilliant scarlet males will soon appear. In fact, birds are the only animal group that raises its offspring in pairs. “Pairwise parenting is rare in mammals, insects, crustaceans, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, although it occurs sporadically in all of them... It is common only in birds," says Bernd Heinrich, author of "The Nesting Season," reviewed in Audobon magazine.

This brings to mind the Dalai Lama's talk at Radio City this past year, in which he spoke of compassion and unending love as a quality of mothers. (He also cited himself as being "the first feminist Dalai Lama," adding that the world would be a better place if women were its leaders.)

As an example of motherly compassion, he spoke about the golden geese he used to watch as a child at the Potala Palace. The goslings would fall from their nests high up in the palace walls (or perhaps they were pushed out of the nest by their mamas) and be set upon by raptors. He would gather up the fallen babies in a basket and take them to another monastery, some miles away, where they were safer. He said the mothers would always follow him, flying and waddling the whole, long way, while the fathers would drop in for a while and then scatter. All species have this one thing in common, he said: knowing a mother's love.

Recommended reading: Aside from all of Roberto Bolano (all Bolano, all the time) and of course Proust, a story in the Atlantic by T.C. Boyle, "The Silence," [theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/08/the-silence/8040/]  and an interview in the Paris Review with Michel Houellebecq  [theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-no-206-michel-houellebecq]. The exceptional and prickly Houellebecq (whom I haven't yet read) is himself an exception to the rule suggested above, of maternal love. Ahh, it doesn't pay to generalize.

Finding Time Again

My intrepid book club of four stalwart women has been reading Proust for over a year now. While our other members have fallen away for one reason or another (some aghast at what we've undertaken), the four of us have moved steadily through the volumes of "In Search of Lost Time," sometimes with difficulty, always with admiration for this incredible writer and his accomplishment.

After reading volume one, "Swann's Way," we decided to go on to volume two. And then we couldn't quit. We aren't all in the same place or even the same volume, but that's part of the beauty of the series: It repeats its themes over and over, so it doesn't really matter where you are.

When I went to purchase volume four, "Sodom and Gomorrah," the bookstore clerk congratulated me. Most people quit after the first or second volume, he said. Volumes five and six of the Penguin Classics series aren't even available in the US.

I'm now embarking on the final volume, "Finding Time Again" -- and "embark" does describe the lilting, meandering journey, as if over an ocean or a great body of water, that one takes with any one of the volumes.

In volume five's, "The Fugitive," Proust surprises readers with several surprising turns of event (which we didn't discuss in our group last month because some members were still reading "Sodom and Gomorrah"). In the beginning of volume six, Proust reflects on a journal by the Goncourts, pressed on him by a friend, that recounts a dinner at the Verdurin salon, a group "Marcel" has visited many times, and describes people Marcel has also socialized with and written about.

Proust/Marcel comments, wryly, that he doesn't have a good eye for detail, like the Goncourts. Ironic, because he notes in minute detail and at great length such dinner parties and the people who frequent them. Then he qualifies his statement: He isn't interested in exterior details; he's blind to such details. Instead, what he notes is the undercurrent that is particularly meaningful to his view of the world.

Which is why we love Proust. It isn't just the detail in his beautifully crafted and patiently spun out writing, but rather the reaching down to things beneath the surface, even things which, in their strangeness, we can't quite grasp (like his contrarian views on love).