I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Friday, February 22, 2002

I remember bell bottoms, and long side-burns. Yuch.

I remember a kid in the playground when I was about six or so calling in a somewhat annoyed voice, "MOOOMMMM!" And I was puzzled and asked my Mommy why he only called her Mom. (He was obviously older than I, maybe eight or nine, though all I heard was his voice from far away, outside the playground, on the amazing amphitheatrical sledding hill, echoing more loudly in the summer.) She said it was a kind of uglier name for Mommy, and that she hoped I'd never do it, or at least not before I was ten. I call her Mom now.

I remember kneaded erasers. My father told me I was really playing with shit. He got this from the Caine Mutiny -- the analysis of Queeg's little steal balls.

I remember a kid with a baseball jacket with patches from all the teams. I had a similar one in red, but his blue one was cooler somehow. I remember that this was when I learned the word "wind-breaker," and how much I loved windbreakers.

I remember meeting a kid called Billy Douglas. This was the first other Billy I'd ever met. I'd climbed the rocks ("climbing the rocks" was the standard name for our activity of scrambling up a granite outcrop in Riverside Park and 88th street.) His sister kept calling "Billy, Billy," and I kept saying, "Yes." I realized early on that he must be another Billy, but I decided not to show that I realized that, until they figured it out. Until then I'd be justified in saying yes. And this way we might talk and become friends. This was the kind of ruse I used for friendship then. I don't know how much of that has changed. Anyhow they did figure it out (she was a little younger than he was, and didn't quite trust me to be really named Billy.) I think I was the first other Billy HE'D ever met too. He turned out to know Tommy Hoge -- to be a cousin or something. So we agreed to be friends, despite his sister's reservations. But I never saw him again.

posted by william 9:28 PM
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