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, January 08, 2004

I remember my downtown grandfather's practicality. His stentorian voice would boom out his judgment as to whether something was PRACTICAL or not. (My first understanding of the word -- from TV uses of "practically" -- was that it meant almost, as in "We're practically there;" so initially I was puzzled by what he meant.) It was practical to put your water glass where you wouldn't knock it over (and he'd mime knocking it over with his elbow). It was practical to put your lower lip inside the water glass when you drank, so as not to leave an unsightly smear on the glass. I thought this was absurd, making practicality another name for the kind of fastidiousness that was itself disgusting; but later I found some etiquette book that recommended the same thing. He was a tyrant of practicality, forcing his obsessions on us -- on us kids anyhow.

But he was smart, too, as I realized one day. Of course his fastidiousness meant that he was very alert to our handwashing. He didn't like Powell, because Powell was a dog. One evening, when he had come to dinner; we were summoned to sit down, but my mother hadn't come in yet (she was in the kitchen fixing the salad). I think I realize now that he tended to come to dinner only on nights when my father worked late. After washing my hands, I came in to the dining room, where my grandfather was already sitting. Powell jumped up on me, and I fielded him with my torso, avoiding petting him. I sat down, and my grandfather boomed, "I'm glad you washed your hands." Usually he asked me, but now he said: "I know you did because of how you backed away from the dog" (miming me). This seemed a very neat thing for him to observe and put together like that; plus it redounded to my credit, which was a rare result of an occasion when my physical behavior gave me away. I thought he was really a very decent person. (Which he was.)

posted by william 8:47 AM
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