The unbearable lightness of being, in the search of lost time: two childhood memories

I have a plan of reading Proust someday. The Search of Lost Time is waiting for me on the top shelf of my bookcase. I keep on postponing though, and the main reason is that I´m afraid of giving up reading. Proust is considered one of the most important names in  the twentieth century literature altogether with Joyce, and since I couln´t make it to the end of Ulysses (in fact, I coulnd´t make it to the end of the third page), failing to read him as well would have a terrible effect on my self-esteem, so I am waiting to read it when I have some free time.

But I started this post using the tittle from a different book, The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera. What is the connection, one might think. Well, memories, I would say. Just like the Madeleine in Proust´s book, the tittle of Kundera´s novel triggered several of  my own memories. And, since the idea I had in mind once I started this blog was to tell a history, a version of my history, of how I became invisible, well, it seemed to me as a very interesting begining.

The unbearable lightness of being. I read this book a long time ago. A sad story, from what I can remember. I always enjoyed sad histories, they seem more real, more close to me. I never got to understand the tittle, though. As I said, many years have passed, I was young, but maybe what Kundera wanted to express was how fragile life is and how hard it is to deal with that.  Anyway, what I most remember from the book is a dog, a female boxer breed named Karenin. Boxers are the sweetest dogs in the world, and I know that because I had one when I was a child.

Our dog was a male named Calèche, the name of a French perfume. It is a strange name for either a dog or a perfume, and the dog didn´t smell like French eau de toillette at all, but that was his name. We could do whatever we wanted with him. He never barked or tried to bite. Once, he brought home a chicken. A living one. The animal was stressed with the situation, but not injured. I think my father took the chicken back to its owner. One of my oldest childhood memory is of Calèche trying to catch his tail and never succeding, but he kept trying over and over.


One day, I woke up to see my dog agonizing in our front yard. It seems he had eaten some rodenticide, but we never knew for sure. He died right in front of my eyes and that is a memory I have. I was probably three or four. The unbearable heaviness of not being, he left us. My first encounter with death.

Years have passed and I got seriously ill: Hepatitis. I spent the whole period of my summer vacation in bed. I felt terribly alone, don´t remember seeing other kids around for a long time. I had to go through blood exams to see if my liver was fighting back the virus. I hated needles, I cried of fear. I thought I was going to die. I was seven.
The unbearable lightness of being, I didn´t die.

After that, I had my first depression. But that is another story.