Then I woke up!
For Now, I See
Setting: A quiet, timeless garden just as the first hints of dawn are painting the sky.
(The scene opens with Sophia tending to a flowering jasmine vine. Marcel is sitting on a stone bench, watching the shadows recede.)
Sophia: You seem to be observing the world with a particular intensity this morning, Marcel. It's an hour many people miss entirely—an hour when the world is often still in a deep, private slumber.
Marcel: (He sighs lightly, gazing at the garden around them.) It's true. For so long, my days felt like they began late, after I'd spent hours tucked away from the noise and light. My earliest memories, my most vivid and formative ones, were often built in a time of night or retreat. It was in that seclusion that my inner life truly began to speak.
Sophia: That profound period of withdrawal wasn’t a loss of time, though, was it? It was a necessary gestation. You had to first look deeply within yourself and the chambers of your own memory before you could truly see and interpret the vast world outside.
For a long time I used to go to bed early.
—Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Marcel: I suppose that's the nature of recollection—it requires a kind of distance, a quiet corner where the past can rise to the surface without the clamor of the present day. Now, as the morning light grows, I feel a shift. The world seems clearer, more sharply defined. It’s as if the long dream has given way to an immediate and certain vision.
Sophia: (She turns and smiles gently.) That is always the pattern of true seeing, Marcel. We move from the long, dark periods of pure introspection—the time spent simply preparing the self—to the moment when the light arrives, not just to illuminate the things around us, but to show us the connection between what we hold inside and what is truly there. It is the wisdom of the emerging day: For now, I see.
Sophia: Now that you've glimpsed this clearer light, what truth do you feel is most crucial for you to hold onto?
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