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

Sunday, January 19, 2003

I remember when I used to make free long distance phone calls by charging the calls to third parties. You gave the operator a number and a name. For a while I would charge them to my orthodontist. I used a made-up first name and his last name, as though I were his kid. But I thought they didn't really check. So once in Florida I was calling Linda Rausnitz, and I just gave the name G.V.L. Slingsby, which is James Joyce's pseudonym (in Our exagmination round his factification for incamination of Work in Progress), based on some Edward Lear characters in I think "The Dong with the Luminous Nose." Anyhow, the operator called back after I made my call, and asked me to spell the name. I did it again, and she told me to hang on. This was in a phone booth in the brightly lit lobby of the Miami Beach condo where my downtown grandmother lived in the winters. (I think my grandfather stayed in New York.) She challenged me again, so I hung up. The phone started ringing immediately. I picked it up and she started challenging me again, so I hung up again. The phone rang and rang. It was about 1 a.m. I kept waiting for it to stop. It was amazing how powerless I felt -- the only real life analogue to a Stephen King's Christine horror movie experience I've ever had. It wouldn't stop. I picked it up and hung up and it rang again. Finally I left it hanging off the hook. Some people saw me do this from across the lobby, but they didn't seem inclined to challenge me. I imagined the operator calling the cops and telling them where the phone was. But I got away. Later, Mrs. Rausnitz said that the phone company called them and asked who had called. Now that I think of it, it must have been more like 10 than 1, since I wouldn't have been calling that late. But in Florida -- in the senior citizens district of Miami Beach -- it felt like 1. They didn't give me away, but it felt like a very close shave. Still Linda and I broke into a pinball machine at the hotel where she was staying a couple of days later and took about $40 in quarters. The rec room guard called security. We saw them coming in and we left while they went up to examine the machine. We ran through the lobby and grabbed a cab. They chased us and tried to stop the cab, but he didn't pull over. "The airport!" she said, not knowing where else to go, and afraid the cab would give our destination away. But after a few minutes, he said that they hadn't got his number since he would have heard on the radio if they were trying to find him. Linda said something stupid about how they wanted to kidnap us, but it was obvious to me that the cab driver knew what was going on, and that she was insulting his intelligence. I gave him my grandmother's address, and we gave him $10 in quarters for the $3 ride. The hotel -- the Doral! -- was owned by my classmate Steve Schrages's father, it turned out (Steve Schragis or Schrages now owns Carroll books I think), and I think I told Lou Rosseman about this and he told Steve who made fun of us. He was a wry and mellow guy. I was stupid and self-destructive. But within reason.

posted by william 12:20 AM
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