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

Thursday, March 21, 2002

I remember that the subway stations on the IRT line at 181st Street and 168th Street have metal bridges over the tracks -- I think they're the only station where there aren't separate routes to the uptown and downtown sides. If you realized you wanted to change directions, those were both good stops to do it at. They also have elevators to the surface, unlike most stops. I think 191st does too -- in fact I think it's the stop farthest underground. In high school, in the Bronx, I used to have a three hour break three days a week (from 10:38 to 1:38), and I'd often take the subway down to my grandmother's house near the 168th street station and have the jam pancakes (palachinken) or dumplings (knoedel) that she would make for me. I liked reading on the subway too -- I read all of Ulysses on it for an independent studies my junior year with Mr. McCormick. It was also for him that I wrote the first story that I really liked. It began (ready) and then was punctuated by (aim) and ended with (fire), and of course it was the last thoughts of someone about to be executed. I remember "One alone stood facing rifles trained on him. One once had a name, but now he was just one alone." This was after (aim) when I thought it became clear what was happening. I'd been coy after (ready). I hadn't yet read Borges's "The Secret Miracle," but I had read Jack London's "To Build a Fire" which impressed me enormously, and also a lot of cummings, from whom I think I took the preciousity of that "one alone" (sort of like: "anyone lived in a pretty how town," etc.). I remember that when Mr McCormick read the story aloud (he'd read to the class if you wanted to preserve anonymity) he bellowed "Fire!" at the end, whereas I wanted it to be understated: (fire). I remember the two other stories that most impressed me in that class were by Jonathan Easton and Andrew Birsh, and that in the discussion of (my story Andy said that it was painful to listen to, which I decided to take as praise, and which he sort of meant as praise. Jonathan's story had a wonderful scene in which two kids notice that the same guy has signed the elevator inspection certificate in one of their elevators as in the elevator in the other kid's building. Which reminds me that I remember New York City elevator inspection certificates, and that all the elevators were Otis, including the brushed steel elevators at 168th street.

I remember in that elevator once seeing a skinny guy, tall, limping, with a green cane and white framed glasses, very charismatic, come in with two short friends or hangers-on. We were the only four people going up, and he pulled out a marker once the door closed and tagged the inside of the elevator: Louie 167. (That's how you tagged in those pre-Basquiat days.) And so I always looked for his name afterwards: he was only a walk-on in the graffiti world, but I liked seeing his name unexpectedly all over the city.

I remember Taki 147(?), the first of them all.

posted by william 11:20 PM
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