''Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah'...and they were afraid. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

At the beginning of Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust remembers his childhood, not through conscious effort, but through revelation. As an adult, one day he casually bites into a madeleine, the little French cookie. And out of nowhere, the taste, the smell of the madeleine evokes memory: "the old grey house upon the street, rose up like a stage set,...and with the house the town, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and soli…