No wonder! We, as infants, were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than who we are now.Īnd, our world was completely, utterly, magically Alive! I had had a sensory key given to me - just as Proust was given the grace of a little cake of Madeleine to permit an instant of exact recall.Īnd you know, these epiphanies can lead us down a wonderful rabbit hole - just like Alice - into an enchanted land that almost seems. Toscanini was her hero! As a mathematics major at Stanford, she learned to love the pure linear clarity and strength of the classical sounds he elicited from the NBC Orchestra.īeethoven was ALWAYS playing in the later background in my childhood, too, as every so often Dad’s starting pay as a scientist would allow him to splurge on a new Toscanini 33RPM record for her from Frieman’s, where she worked part-time. Well, much later, I was reminded by my Mom that we had lived in Big Sur on the coast of California when I was one year old, where my Dad worked as a biologist at Hopkins Marine Station - we had lived, in fact, near Steinbeck’s own Cannery Row.Īnd of course, she always wanted me to have a good grounding in classical music. I used to retain a vivid and unmistakable memory of lying in bed as an infant in a dark, warm room and hearing the ominous and mysterious double booms - first low-pitched, then even lower - of a nearby fog horn.īut I was born in inland Michigan, nowhere near the ocean!Īs a teenager I used to think “I CAN’T have just dreamed that up!” I used to remember it when listening to Beethoven, for some strange reason.

suddenly the mists of time and faulty memory withdraw, and it all comes back to you!Įvery nook and cranny, every secret, mystical corner, each minute detail of your home and of the enthralled childhood you once enjoyed would flood your heart with a forgotten, Elysial joy. You know - the one you lived in as an infant.Įureka. Imagine you're magically transported back to your first home.

Bachelard the poetics of space