A spiritual border

When I saw an external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, surrounding it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever touching its substance directly; for it would somehow evaporate before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body that is brought into proximity with something wet never actually touches its moisture, since it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation.


Proust is partial to complex metaphysical metaphors. This one arose out of his recounting how he enjoyed reading at the summer house in a hooded wicker chair under a particular chestnut tree, but the context isn't that important, because once he launches into the stratosphere, metaphorically speaking, he often loses me. In fact, to borrow a bit from the metaphor in question, I sometimes feel like his overactive brain is its own sort of spiritual border, getting in between his actual thoughts and the reader's understanding of them. This bit about the border and the evaporation both tantalizes me and escapes me.