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

I remember the marvelous, unbelievable day Belinda and I watched the football team practicing. How did she come to sit next to me and start up a conversation? It was springtime, I now recall: why was the football team practicing in the spring? It must have been a kind of warm-up for the next fall when they'd practice in earnest. I can date this! (If I want.) Ezra Pound had just died! Or maybe the New York Times Magazine had had an article about him and Olga Rudge living in their weird exile in Rappello, and he died shortly after. Out of some hazy discretion I won't check, except perhaps as a comment. I can date it by relating it to Pound because I remember Belinda remarking that he was an anti-semite, as we talked. He must have just died -- I remember noticing her dismissiveness, which I wouldn't have if she'd just expressed indifference to the weirdo in an article. The article must have still been on my mind though. It was one of those endless but rapid afternoons, a kind of "Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici" experience. We just sat and talked. What did she want? I was too shy to know or to consider. And maybe rightfully so. What did I want? What could be more obvious than what I wanted? But not entirely to me. It was because of Belinda that I kept a journal, and wrote awful poetry. She had red hair; I tried a sonnet: "The sun rises with her in humble praise. / The birds start to sing with love for my love. / Awakening innocence, she greets the days, / As the light from her soul shines in her eyes. / And from within her this sweet soul does sing / A fair melody, in an angel's voice. / A song such as that which is sung by spring. Through the world now grown young, my soul does swing." Luckily, all I remember from the ensuing sestet is the awful "Life is sweet love." And me thinking about Ezra Pound! Mr. Luke pointed out that "does sing" and "does swing" were very weak. ("While feeble expletives their aid do join....") But that day stands out. It was a Friday. How much can evaporate over a weekend! Brent, one of the players, said to me on Monday, "Rumour has it that you're going out with Belinda D______." (That I don't want her to search for this indicates something about the very rare items from those days that I can still imagine myself embarrassed by. And that I don't give Brent's last name indicates something similar.) I knew what the rumour was -- he'd noticed us watching the practice. But it was lovely to think that some remnant of the afternoon could survive the weekend. Belinda was cheerfully friendly to me after that, but started going out with one of the football players, also named Billy, also a grade behind her. Ah -- it was spring of tenth grade (eleventh for her) -- she went out with the other Billy when I was in eleventh grade. She would sometimes come into the lounge and if we were both there she'd call "Let's play football!" and we'd go out onto the field and toss the ball around. But the situation was all too clear. I saw her a couple of times in college (her brother was my best friend; I'd gotten to know him because of my crush on her.) But all was changed -- she remained too much the eleventh grader, although with considerably augmented poise and self-possession. Back then I felt I'd transcended those times. But obviously I still haven't, not entirely.

Ok -- what I got wrong: Pound died Wednesday November 1, 1972. The Times Magazine article had been January 9, ten months earlier. So we must have been talking about his death, and it must have been a fall football practice. And now I seem to recall that Halloween was in the air. We must have been talking Friday the 3rd. I think there were some Halloween parties going on in Westchester that weekend, where Belinda lived. But I was going back to Manhattan. I was in eleventh grade. I remember writing in my journal, on November 6th -- that would then have been the next Monday evening, after talking to Brent about "the rumour," "Sixteen tomorrow." It seemed an important age to turn. We'd been reading Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart in English class. The heroine, a young writer, keeps a journal, which her guardian shows to an established writer. He's impressed by the first sentence: "So I am with them, in London." He likes the comma. So did I. I also kept a journal because Stephen Dedalus did. In the "Sixteen tomorrow" entry I lamented, I recall, the melancholy of love. I must have heard about Pound the previous January when I read the Magazine article. (Although I'd known something about him before, because I was interested in all of Joyce's connections.) Anyhow, this all confirms that by Monday night when I wrote the "Sixteen tomorrow" entry I basically knew that whatever had happened Friday was over. I associate that entry with her going out with the other Billy. (Or was it Bill?) So I now see that of course we were watching football together because she was interested in him. Heigh ho.

posted by william 2:53 PM
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