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, October 17, 2002

I remember the elevator in my uptown grandparents' building on Haven Avenue. Unlike our elevator its interior was stamped metal. It was yellowish -- although I think that might have been before it was replaced. I remember the porthole windows of both that elevator and our elevator at home, which was also replaced by a great blank door. I never used the elevator when my grandparents lived on the first floor -- you went up about five steps, turned a corner and went to the end of the tiled lobby. The mailboxes were there, and I remember once seeing the mailman opening them all up -- maybe fifty -- and filling them with mail from the top (diagonally). The only time I used the elevator was to go upstairs to see my friend Kathy Yerzley, who was a few months older than I. (See 5/9/2002) Later, my grandparents moved to the top floor, and so we always used the elevator. (Well, sometimes I used the stairs.) My piano teacher, Mrs. Jellinek also moved to the same building, and I took a couple of lessons from her there, I believe, after she stopped coming to my house to teach me (just as my pediatrician, Dr. Steffy eventually stopped coming with her car; I remember how strange it was to go to her office on Wadsworth rather than having her come to our house). I liked the airiness of the inner spaces of my grandparents' building. It was fusty and full of old people, but airy nonetheless. I liked the strange awning through the entrance court. I remember them also changing the doors of the lobby, adding a second set and buzzers (you used to be able to walk right in). I seem to dimly remember that the door had a wrought iron grill till replaced by the glass double-doors. My grandparents complained that the new doors were very heavy, which seemed an odd word to apply to a door -- you weren't trying to pick it up!

posted by william 12:30 AM
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