Yesterday, I saw Proust’s cake, madeline, sold in a bagel shop. I listened to someone speak of his grandmother and the apricot stone she planted. He’s brought the growing plant in because of the cold. What if it dries out? But he’ll return it to the garden after the frost has gone. I thought: I would like for my past to be as certain as my present. I thought, but I am losing it, the past, even as the present is as hard and bright as the blue sky.
Cold weather at the end of February, the same as last year. We were in the holiday camp last year in Camber Sands for the festival. Thin walls, a blanket each to sleep beneath. Too cold! Tequila and card games. Slint. And this year? I was ill for a few weeks, tired and vague, and then, yesterday morning, I knew I was better: the present was very sharp again; it had come into focus. I had been staggering about like a dazed ox, and now? The day was sharply in focus. Frost everywhere. The blue, hard sky; no clouds. What was I reading? Something about dub. I had thought to myself, that’s what Blanchot’s recits are – dub – where plot and character are stripped away and what is left is only a hollow echoing, drop outs and reverberation. I thought, that was my present, when I was ill. That was my non-present, the moment lost in its own echoing.
And now? Time does not lag behind itself; the present passes like the water that runs from the snout of a glacier. Clarity: last night, coming home, even the stars were bright, and I thought: I should know their names, these stars. But I saw the three stars of Orion’s belt low over the trees in the little park close to the flat. It’s only now the year’s beginning, I thought. It’s begun; every event will be clear and sharp; time will keep its appointment with itself; every day will be as bright and glittering as the tarmac that is streaked with frost.
Lars Iyer's Blog 