très riches heures xi
when my son was very small he had two ways of denoting events in the past: they happened ‘you know, last time’ (near past) or ‘a long time ago, when i was three’ (distant past). the other day, i was thinking of my great grandmother, born at the tail end of a very busy 19th century, whose parents and grandparents were born even deeper into it, themselves living at the time of the reconstruction, of the klondike gold rush, the franco prussian war. my great grandmother was alive for a good part of my early life, and i knew her who knew those who knew those times and events, even if at the greatest of distances. are they past, when i can still remember the smell of her apartment in the retirement home where she lived? i was thinking that that some things do not so much happen as occur, and keep occurring, never reaching anything like an ending. like someone saying ‘not sure that’s a good idea’, and doing it anyway.