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

Friday, October 31, 2003

I remember trick-or-treating, and that one person once asked us for a trick (maybe the first time I went), and we had no idea what he was asking for. I had sort of thought that they were supposed to perform a trick for us, if they weren't going to give us a treat. It might have been the same person -- at any rate it was some earnest but good-humored intellectual -- who played the piano for us as a treat, some Broadway song, I believe. We didn't think that was a treat, plus it took a long time that we might have spent getting candy. But we were polite. I remember that one apartment always had a bowl full of dimes, instead of candy. Usually we'd end up with tons of candy and a little money -- plus all the money for Unicef. I remember stealing some of the UNICEF money to buy comics, but not very much of it. I wouldn't have been able to refold the box so it was just a question of trying to shake coins out of the slot. I put the quarters back in, but kept a few nickels and dimes. I remember the results of shaking, and how you wanted the coin that came out to be a dime. I remember one person -- or couple, maybe -- opening the door when we rang and refusing to give us anything. I was puzzled that they were surprised and irritated to see us. We must have been one of dozens of groups from the building. We went up to the fifteenth floor, and then walked down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. No adults chaperoned us. In buildings, you don't know who's home and who's Halloween-friendly, so you just ring at every door. Some opened and some didn't, but those that opened always had treats. No one liked getting apples. We were told about razor blades, but didn't take the threat seriously. It was just that apples were always available at home, and candy wasn't. I remember the smell of the lacquered cardboard halloween masks we'd buy on 83rd street, and the elastic cords that always threatened to rip through their eyelets at the sides of the mask.

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