Into blurred oblivion

I’d rather she be oblivious to my existence than to know I exist and not care. At least the first way I still have a chance.

That idea came to me while reading A Grief Observed in the Cougareat yesterday, and while it doesn’t have any connection to my current life (I wasn’t thinking of any one girl in particular when I thought it), I liked it. In a melodramatic sort of way. ;)

Anyway, here’s yet another paragraph from the book that I found true to my own experience:

I have no photograph of her that’s any good. I cannot even see her face distinctly in my imagination. Yet the odd face of some stranger seen in a crowd this morning may come before me in vivid perfection the moment I close my eyes tonight. No doubt, the explanation is simple enough. We have seen the faces of those we know best so variously, from so many angles, in so many lights, with so many expressions — waking, sleeping, laughing, crying, eating, talking, thinking — that all the impressions crowd into our memory together and cancel out into a mere blur. But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice — that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child.

When I’ve liked a girl in the past, it’s always been really, really hard to imagine her face clearly. All I get is that blur he mentioned. Sure, every once in a while the angle will shift and it’ll come into focus for a brief, fleeting instant, but then it’s back. I remember once a few years ago, every time I tried to remember the face of my crush (there’s got to be a better word for it — I feel like a teenage girl putting it that way ~sigh~), I’d see the face of practically every girl I knew except for her. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring her into focus. Period.

I don’t know if Lewis’s reasoning is right — it’s happened to me even when I’d only seen the girl two or three times — but the effect is the same. And it’s rather frustrating. But c’est la vie, no?

When you don’t have the real life person around, I might add, you end up creating an image/persona of them in your mind. Lewis has a quote about that in Grief, but I’m saving that for another post. :)

I really liked A Grief Observed when I read it. The passage you cited is one I related to. It was always odd to me that if I tried to draw from memory people I know well, it was difficult. Much harder than with people I’d just met. That passage explained the phenomenon very well.

Another passage I liked from A Grief Observed that relates to it is (I don’t have a copy on hand, so I’ll likely paraphrase this badly) the one where Lewis says that he’s almost afraid to try to remember Joy because he’s concerned that his memory won’t render her accurately–that his own emotions and reflections will alter her into something inauthentic and of his own creation. I have this concern as well when I’m thinking of people I no longer have daily interaction with–that my perception of them is idealized or one-dimensional. It’s hardest with people who have died or who you’ve had past relationships with, I think, because it’s nearly impossible to get the reality back.

I adore your epiphany about love while in the Cougareat. (I love that it was in the Cougareat. That’s funny on its own.) That is definitely worth publishing, and I’m going to write it in my thought journal right now. And see, that’s so why I’m an advocate of reading — because it takes you into your deepest thoughts, and causes reflection on your own life.

Way to be Ben. Way to be.

Katherine: Ah, yes, you’ve hit upon the next of those topics I’ve been saving to write on. :) (Well, not the very next — I’ve already written that post and will revise it in a second — but probably tomorrow’s.) But that’s not much of a response, so let me say that I agree completely. And I find that even for people I do have interaction with, but only via e-mails or blogs or what have you, my mind creates a persona that in effect becomes that person in my imagination. And when I again see them in real life, it can almost be jarring at times because my imaginary version of them was, as you say, inauthentic and of my own creation. More about that in the post. :)

A: Thanks. :) (And I love the Cougareat. I need to read there more often…) Amen on the value of reading. Not only does it give me stuff to blog about ;), but it makes me think, makes me feel. It enlarges my soul. As C.S. Lewis said (in one of my all-time favorite passages), “In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.” Mmm.

Woah, woah, woah. That is the quote of all quotes on reading. That pretty much sums up what I’ve been trying to describe on how I feel about reading. What if I had never met you, Ben? It could have been years before I stumbled across this quote. Then again, I’m coming to the Y in January, and I plan on being in the CS Lewis society. E says that it’s fantabulous.

E speaks the truth. :) We’ll be glad to have you there — meetings are usually Wednesdays at 5 p.m. in 4186 JFSB. (There’s a remote possibility we might change that winter semester, to try to accommodate more people, but we’ll see.) Hopefully in the next week or two we’ll have a website up with more information.

And yes, the quote is The Quote. :) It’s from the last page of An Experiment in Criticism, which is a nice short book with several gems in it.