(very Loosly) Related to Nabokov

Saw this comic strip on synesthesia and it reminded me of Nabokov.
(From Three Panel Soul, an online comic)

Slices of Time

This picture is separated from the location of this writing by over 8194 miles, and from this date by approximately one year and nine months. It was taken outside a German pub in Sydney, Australia, in the last part of January, 2008. The mug I am holding has the name of the pub- Lowenbrau, with the accent marks over the "O" and the "A" so you know its genuine Germanic- and a rearing lion- why, I'm not sure. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the beer in the mug, although I do recall a rich, complex taste, much more bitter than most (German beers generally do not contain sugar). The silly hat I'm wearing- and yes, it is silly, I recognize this- had been purchased just hours earlier in a small shop that sold military leavings. You can just barely see the hat I had been wearing on the table in front of me. Behind me you can see something of the area the Lowenbrau was set in; The Rocks. The oldest part of Sydney, with many of the buildings and streets being originals, built out of stone and brick, although you can see that the road in the background is modern pavement. Some of them where, presumably because cobblestone streets, while beautiful, are not conducive to an optimal driving experience. I still own that mug- and still drink beer out of it- as well as that hat- and its still silly.

Wish I'd found this quote before putting up my "first memory" blog post:

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
Vladimir Nabokov

A weekend, I think?

Looking back, it is difficult to find a really good, full memory of my childhood. Its all just fragments, really; shards of events without even the benefit of a good temporal anchor. I remember walking in the woods with my father, something that I know we did together from a young age, but how young exactly? I can remember the trail that wound up behind our home up in the mountains, how it seemed, at the time, to be something very natural, created by the forces of deer and bear rather than man. I can remember how the trees, mostly every-greens as I recall, seemed to tower over me, and how fallen branches where adventurous obstacles. But where they such because I was four? Six? Eight? I don't know. And it seems to me that I must not have cared at the time; what age I was, what day it was, so why should I now. Is an event in my life any more meaningful because I am able to dredge up a mental calender to go with it? Is it somehow more special because I can point to a spot on the map and say "there, that is where it happened?" I think not. I am content to let my early memories, and indeed many of my more recent ones, remain as fragments. After all, of such fragments are mosaics made.