You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain—the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him; on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of him when she saw blue hydrangeas). She had influenced him more than any person he had ever known.
Just what Proust meant by his symbols of recollection of past life experiences: Combray--the hawthorne bushes, the Guermantes Way and Mesgelise Way, the river, the sonata notes, Phaedrra, the seashore of the dancing girls, and certainly the sought for kisses from his mom. They represented triggers of precious moments to savor as he became more and more conscious of his real self through life. He was evermore alert to presence and tge awkened self. The past did not define him but proveded necesar anchors to being alertly awre of the present for whih he was deestined.
