Marcel Proust inspired the title of this blog. He paints the image of a madeleine with these words: “Short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell.” No, this blog is not one of a chef needing to vent about petite pastries. Rather, it is a collection of memories and memories in the making.
But what do madeleines have to do with memories? Well...
It’s a gross understatement that Proust was insane. Nonetheless, and potentially due to the insanity, he was a brilliant, prolific writer. He dedicated his entire adult life to “A la recherché du temps perdu” or, in translation, “In Remembrance of Things Past.” For over a decade he locked himself in a cork-lined room in his Paris apartment and labored over the seven-volume magnum opus. In volume one of seven, Swann’s Way, Proust delicately and ferociously describes the process of memory. He describes specifically the movement of memory being catalyzed by external forces.
…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
He visits a friend’s home and is served a madeleine with tea... “and suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of Madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray, when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of lime-flower tea. The whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.” Painfully gorgeous.
my madeleines is where I curate adventures and make memories focused on my life's passions: globetrotting, photography, and sundry feats of creativity.
Each in their own way... a catalyst.
