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

Monday, July 29, 2002

I remember H O farina. The commercial in all its details comes back to me: a cartoon with a boy trudging home from school (his books held together by a rubber strap!) enters screen left and trips over a rock, witnessed by a girl (screen left); his books go flying. (I think this commercial prepared me for Peanuts.) Then, the boy: "Every day I trip over that same stone!" The girl: "Movie it, Willie!" Boy, shrugging, ashamed: "Too big!" Girl: "I can." Boy "Cannot! You're a giirrrl." She picks it up and moves it. Song: "Little Willhemina eats her farina, H O Farina, CREAM Farina, smooth and delicious, all boys and girls love it so. H O!"

I remember the early Peanuts, before Charlie Brown and co. grew up to be the slightly older kids they are in the classic Peanuts cartoons. In the earlier ones they're about two years younger. I remember when Charlie Brown's sister was born. ("I'm a father! I mean, my Dad's a father! I'm a brother!") But probably I read this in a collection.

I remember Hetty Galen. A neighbor in East Quogue, who did children's voices on commercials. She was very big -- very fat. Once I asked her to do kids' voices and she was amazing. She did all the voices on the Hang on Harvey (a game) commercial: "Hang on Harvey, hang on!" Later I got ludicrously obsessed with analyzing the subtleties of commercials in my head, especially of their voices. (In particular the amazing voices for some women's shoes that were also like sneakers -- "Looks like a pump! Feels like a sneaker!" -- which showed some women playing a strenuous game of basketball in pumps. At the end of the commercial, a female voice asks, "Where can I get 'em?" and another voice answers, "At Jordan Marsh!" The first voice is eager, anxious, sorry to be sounding selfish, but finally frank about really really wanting them. The second voice answers as though joyfully to absolve all sins, once you realize where you can get them and what it means about your desire that you can get them there: that your desire is ok.) Those days are over (I hope); I think they go back to my surprise at the carefulness of Hetty Galen's intonations in these kids' voices.

posted by william 12:52 AM
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