trick of memory

Yesterday I was typing in a post here -- read it over and saw a mistake --
one of my favorite state representatives I ever knew would NOT have been wearing his hat -- ten-gallon or otherwise -- in the Taxation or any other committee.

My memories of him wearing his hat -- outside -- must have got mixed in -- blended -- with memories of him chairing the committee, and his easy, smooth manner, and stimulating questions.

But he wouldn't wear his hat indoors.
Memory can do that -- you remember things, and while each memory, or picture, can be accurate in itself, they can get mixed in, stacked up, superimposed--one with another: you remember the guy, the hat, the committee, the style, and your mind can make connections which weren't there in the real experience.

Memories, on the other hand, are real, too -- as far as they go.
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Eight days ago an article in N.Y. Tms -- "Paris Rediscovers Monet's Magic at Grand Palais": it said the French expressionist artist Claude Monet would look at the thing he was going to paint, and go back to it many times, but finish the picture later in his studio based on what he remembered.

So -- like, not painting the what he sees, but rather what he saw, as he remembers it.
Little different dimension.

The article (written by Michael Kimmelman) says,
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No wonder Proust revered him [Monet]. Proust also wrote that his pictures "make us adore a field, a sky, a beach, a river as though these were shrines which we long to visit, shrines we lose faith in when we see." Reality, with its mess and noise, fails to live up to what Monet painted.
[end quote]
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That's the thing -- art is an opportunity to make things better. To render them as nice as they can be, or as nice as you can make them.

The article also says:
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The style, precisely what shocked and appalled old-school Parisians, masqueraded as an instant take on the subject. Former fishing villages on the Norman coast like Etretat were already turning into resorts catering to vacationing urbanites who wanted to experience such places as if unspoiled by people like themselves.
[end quote]
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"...as if unspoiled by people like themselves...."! -- Like -- the only way to enjoy it is to not go there ! Sort of like -- "Let's don't and say we did."

-30-