avert; bewitch

Time.
Time to get accustomed to the idea (the reality) of 2012.
(I'm not even really used to it being the 2000s. Not necessarily on board with it. Feel like it should still be 19-something. ...)

Thinking about time, and coming across a reference to Proust, I remembered the title of his gigantic novel, "Remembrance of Things Past." Have not read it; always liked the title, somehow....

In his book, Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting An Icon, author and Yale professor Wayne Koestenbaum wrote --
[excerpts]-----------Apparently Jackie was caught reading Proust at a campaign stop. In her last interview, she mentions Proust: "Proust? I'd read that long ago." In early coverage of Mrs. Kennedy, much was made of her recherché tastes in reading (everything from "Colette to Kerouac").
...
[from the first chapter]...I began to write about the allure of icon Jackie in May 1993, while the real Jacqueline Onassis was alive and well. I addressed my sentences toward her....But...Her cancer was announced; with sad suddenness, she died. I can't address Jacqueline Onassis anymore.

But icon Jackie remains, a baffling array of images still requiring interpretation --not because interpretation is a panacea for loss, but because Jackie darkly captivates, and captivation fumbles for a foothold in speech.

Dare I find words for why Jackie mesmerizes? Even while Jacqueline Onassis was alive, icon Jackie had a life of her own, obeying comic-book laws; we could no more explain the icon than we could avert war, bewitch our neighbors, or reverse time.
------------ [end excerpts] {copyright 1995. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York}

"Reverse time." Hmm.
Type in "time is" on Google and it offers us back --
time is on my side
time is running out
time is money
time is of the essence
time is an illusion

"avert war, bewitch our neighbors, or reverse time" --
man has a way with a phrase

-30-