 |
| Guildhalls, Grand Place, Brussels |
What to do? I guess in the "olden days" people kept journals, but nowadays we have the Internet! It wasn't around in 1984 when my story took place, but the cities I visited back then are still around. What a great excuse to spend my days browsing . . . .
The story started at an academic conference held at the university in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Belgium is a country with a split personality -- there are two languages: French and Flemish. The original university was in Leuven, but the French part split off and created a new university in a different location. The town of Ottignies became the foundation for the planned city of Louvain-la-Neuve.
I remembered arriving at the train station and walking to the conference hotel, but which train station and which hotel? I spent several days pouring over Google maps of the area -- I found the train station at Ottignies, but there was no hotel within walking distance. Hmm, try again! Ah, there's a train station right by the university, and lo and behold, there's the hotel a few blocks away! The name of the hotel has changed since then, but I remembered the front lawn with a driveway leading up to the hotel. How interesting it was to have a bird's eye view and imagine myself dragging my bag along that driveway! And there were the woods behind the hotel where we walked with Klaus and first got acquainted.
Filling in the gaps in my memory by finding the physical locations of different parts of the story was an interesting exercise in memory. When I found a location, I apparently tied into a dormant part of my memory banks because I would begin to remember other aspects of my experiences at that location back then. I vaguely remembered talking to someone as I walked to the hotel -- oh, yes, it was Pierre from Ottawa. I didn't always remember the conversations to any great extent, but I knew it happened.
As I progressed through my story, using online resources -- maps, pictures, websites -- I wondered at times how much of my original memory was included and whether I was distorting the view. What I've read about memory and how our brains create and retain memories, I suspect that I adapted some parts somewhat. I realized though that I was telling my story today in 2011 looking back at 1984. If some of the details are manipulated a bit, then I'm okay with that. I held to the spirit of the original with the intention of presenting an interesting book.
I also got a lot of hints from the letters themselves. In our letters to each other, Walter and I both mentioned specific incidents and referred to people around us and exact locations. That was helpful as well. I remembered a conversation we had about religion the first night we met, but the letters reminded me that it came up the next day. Not a major issue, but I moved the conversation in order to be as true to the story as possible.
During all this time that I was recreating the story, I began to feel the time travel I mentioned in an earlier blog post. I would work during the day as if I were living in 1984, but of course when I quit work, it was now 2011 again. A little disconcerting at times! I was kind of anti-social for a while, not avoiding my friends but not making an effort to go out very often. I think that was a matter of self-preservation, to not make the task any harder. Once I had completed writing the narrative part of the story, it was easier to get out and about. I guess I was trying to avoid a split personality!
These days I'm focused on trying to find an agent and get the book published. It's fun to remember the struggles of last spring as I sank deeply into the past. Now I'm looking toward the future -- still time travel, I guess.
Future: translating German, organizing and editing the letters
No comments:
Post a Comment