I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Agoraphiliac remembers:

I remember Highlights for Children, a magazine I saw only in doctors' offices. Maybe because of that, its comic-strip family (the Timbertots?) inspired dread and revulsion in me. They were so blank-faced.

I remember I never warmed to Peanuts, either. I never got that downbeat, non-punchline ending, at least not until much later.

I half-remember an animated film on television, animated the way the Rudolph the Reindeer show was. It featured a live actor I can picture but not name, and an animated sequence where somebody is expelled from a paradise: the sky turns dark and the wind blows and the sea gets stormy. It terrified me, and I only saw it that once.
(*later: an Internet search finally turned up Jack Gilford. The film was The Daydreamer, by Jules Bass of Rankin/Bass. I kept thinking of Vincent Gardenia, though I knew it wasn't him.)

I remember some Gustave Dore illustrations of Gargantua and Pantagruel that shocked me when I was about four years old. I saw them in a neighbor's basement rec-room. It was the giant child holding writhing adults in his pudgy hands that thrilled and frightened me. I regarded those neighbors as having some kind of special, secret knowledge that I probably ought not to have had access to.

--Cross-posted from her livejournal.

posted by william 3:04 PM
. . . 0 comments

Sunday, November 28, 2004

From Rachel Wetzsteon (Happy Birthday!):

I remember, as a teenager, finding out through a loose-lipped friend that my father was throwing me a surprise birthday party, showing up at the party, and getting a weird kick out of feigning surprise: Oh but you shouldn't have! How did you arrange it so cleverly?

I remember a tall, sullen guy in my ninth-grade science class nicknamed "Mailbox" for no apparent reason.

I remember my frogs Max (fat and cheerful) and Sylvester (small and wily) and the plastic container of (stunned and repulsive) mealworms we kept in the refrigerator for them.

I remember a doll called Darcy who was all the rage when I was ten or so. Her scalp swiveled so that she could be blonde one minute, raven-haired the next.

I remember the cat with the guitar in B. Kliban's Cat, singing "Love to eat they mousies,/ Mousies what I love to eat,/ Bite they little heads off,/ Nibble on they tiny feet."

I remember the hopelessly cool kids on Zoom ("I'm Bernadette!") and how I so badly wanted to be one of them. How, I wondered, were they chosen? Did you audition, or did you have to know someone?

I remember Etch-a-Sketch.

I remember Reinforcements, those white adhesive paper rings you placed around the holes in your sheets of looseleaf paper so they'd stay put in the binder. And also the sickly green container they came (come?) in.

I remember developing a morbid fear of Charles Manson and nervously checking the newspaper each time he was up for parole.

I remember the sad day the New York City tokens lost the "Y" in their centers. The new ones were small and hard and bright and there was really no good reason to dislike them, but somehow they seemed greatly diminished, pale shadows of their former selves.

I remember false memory: telling my mother very proudly one day that I remembered where we were when we watched the moon landing on t.v. -- corner of the living room, rug, metal folding chairs -- and her telling me, no, that couldn't be right. I remember thinking I was too young for my memory to be playing such cruel tricks on me. I still think this when I forget things, however small.

--Rachel Wetzsteon (in high retrospective mode on her birthday, hoping
blogger will feel free to edit as he sees fit)

posted by william 10:33 PM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, November 27, 2004

I remember when a Japanese soldier who'd been hiding on an island was discovered, when I was a kid -- he didn't know the war was over. He was old and bedraggled and looked just as glad.

posted by william 6:52 PM
. . . 0 comments

Thursday, November 25, 2004

I remember that Thanksgiving used to be at my uptown grandmother's house, but that after the fight between her and my mother and her mother we went downtown instead and didn't tend to see my uptown grandmother, although I have a sense that those unexpected early evening visits my father would pay, usually taking me along, to his parents would tend to happen on Thanksgiving Day. I remember being slightly surprised that my downtown grandmother could doThanksgiving -- I had sort of internalized its heavy food and massive presentations as Ashkenazi, not Sephardic.

posted by william 7:02 AM
. . . 0 comments

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

I remember kids in seventh or eighth grade asking "Would you rather be dead or red?" or "Better red or dead?" and I thought, Red of course: why object to some color, cartoonish thought it might be, if the only other option was death. I think it was another two years or so before I understood the question.

posted by william 8:16 PM
. . . 0 comments

Sunday, November 21, 2004

I remember autograph albums, that some kids pulled out when we were graduating fifth grade. I remember Amos had one. It's one of maybe three things I remember about Amos, the other two being his name (and how it reminded me of my grandfather's Emil), and that he lived east and not west of P.S. 166, since I either went to a party once at his house or I saw him going home one day in the opposite direction -- I can't be sure. The autograph albums were oblong, with waved, cream pages. It seemed strange to me to be asked for my autograph, since I wasn't famous. I assumed that the autograph albums I had read about only had the signatures of the renowned in them. I didn't have one, and I don't think any of my close friends did. But it turned out my father did, and still does, I think, from when he was in high school or maybe even earlier.

posted by william 2:17 PM
. . . 0 comments

Friday, November 19, 2004

I remember Cutty Sark whiskey, and that I always thought it was Cutty Shark, with an idea of the shark fin cutting through the water as representing the speed or impressiveness of the ship, till one day I was disoriented to see an ad for it in The New Yorker without the h. (The ads had a ship in a bottle, which never seemed like such a big deal to me, I guess because I imagined the bottom of the bottle unscrewed, until I saw a commercial where a father showed his son the last step of building one -- pulling the sails up with a thread through the mouth of the bottle which then detached from the ship and could be pulled out.)

posted by william 11:53 PM
. . . 0 comments

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

I remember that after the movie, while the projector was still going, the pleated curtains would close, and it looked like they were transparent and you could see through them and read the credits (or see the figures) underneath; but they the lights would come up and they would be thick velvet opacities. (I think this was in the tonier, non-continuous showing movie theaters; not the New Yorker, but maybe one on 83rd, on the West side of Broadway (?), across from the Loew's 83rd which has itself been there forever.)

posted by william 7:04 PM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, November 13, 2004

I remember my mother bringing me to New Orleans, which I really wanted to see, and eating at Brennan's (screwdrivers!), The Court of the Two Sisters (where I had a hurricane, and which I think boasted was where the cocktail was invented), Antoine's, where they then took your order without writing it down, no matter how complicated it was (they don't any more), and Buster's Rice and Beans, the best then, where a meal was 75 cents. (Does it still exist?) I liked it a lot then. Then she left and I met my friends Michael and Andy and we hung out for another week, staying with a bass player friend of Michael's in the Garden District. He worked days and we went to the French Quarter and hung out with some hilarious addict street musicians we'd gotten to talking with in Jackson Square, because Andy was a violin and player and played some good stuff on the fiddler's fiddle. As the tourists (shudder) started coming in, the musicians would arrange themselves to play, and when they got a little money I remember one of them announcing to the world, "Well either we're bucking for breakfast at Brennan's or we can go get rice and beans at Buster's." I loved the rhythm of bucking for breakfast at Brennan's. I liked the fact that the rhythm was all you needed to know to get the meaning of the word, like trim in Jeremiah: "Thou trimmest thy way to destruction." Which I guess is what he might've thought of New Orleans too.

posted by william 1:52 PM
. . . 0 comments

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

I remember the seam on the wall-paper (patterned with lightly printed shelves of a boy's room: baseball and glove, hat, other gewgaws that I can't remember, over and over but stuttering at the seams: and nothing like my actual shelves) that ran by my bed, roughly where my knee was, and how I used to like lying in bed, especially when it was hot and my legs were bare, with my legs pressed high against the wall, and how I liked to feel the texture of the seam on my right knee and the relative coolness of the wallpaper against the outside of my right thigh. I remember later (earlier?) the cooler, rougher white paint on plaster of the unpapered wall against my leg.

posted by william 6:55 AM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, November 06, 2004

I remember my parents returning from voting once, maybe when I was 6. It was late morning, not a time they usually came home. I asked them who won and they said that the Democrats had. They always did. I don't know what election this was. And of course the results weren't in till later. But I was glad that our side, the side that called on them for support, won.

I remember Frank Ryan campaigning outside the 86th Street Subway station. I think this was the year Bella Abzug defeated him (when the number of districts shrunk). Then he got sick and died.

I remember my father taking me to vote. At P.S. 166! Where we usually lined up for recess there were voting machines. And grownups in coats lined up. We waited and then went into the booth, pulling the lever which closed the curtain. He showed me how you could flick the wrong toggles and then change them -- he flicked Republican toggles! but then unflicked them -- and then we voted Democratic all the way down (except, maybe, for Javits) and he let me pull the lever which registered the vote and opened the curtain simultaneously, which I thought was pretty neat.

I remember Democrats winning.

posted by william 8:45 AM
. . . 0 comments

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

I remember my shock when Nixon defeated Humphrey. I was in seventh grade. Such things didn't happen. And now I'm in shock again, even though I know such things do happen.

posted by william 11:46 PM
. . . 0 comments

RSS

Email contributions here

Stars and Buttons

Kindertrauma -- memories of scary bits of culture from early life

A weblog on memory and technology

Andy Detskas's I remember site

A high school diary from 1983

Spanish Je me souviens site, soliciting contributions

Lovely French Brainard/Perec Je me souviens site

Old NYC Subway maps! Photos of tokens!

Nicole's I remember site

Blog with a monster! (Still another I remember site)

Pepys remembers

Hearsay anecdotes

Three entries inspired by Brainard

Another I remember site

Brainard's Ten Imaginary Still Lifes

Old Bailey Trials

Yesterdayland

Lost NYC Kids' TV

Pinocchio Theory

1911 Britannica

Find of the Week

object not found

Is this you?

ARCHIVES

02/01/2002 - 03/01/2002

03/01/2002 - 04/01/2002

04/01/2002 - 05/01/2002

05/01/2002 - 06/01/2002

06/01/2002 - 07/01/2002

07/01/2002 - 08/01/2002

08/01/2002 - 09/01/2002

09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002

10/01/2002 - 11/01/2002

11/01/2002 - 12/01/2002

12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003

01/01/2003 - 02/01/2003

02/01/2003 - 03/01/2003

03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003

04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003

05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003

06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003

07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003

08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003

09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003

10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003

11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003

12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004

01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004

02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004

03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004

04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004

05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004

06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004

07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004

08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004

09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004

10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004

11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004

12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005

01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005

02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005

03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005

04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005

05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005

06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005

07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005

08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005

09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005

10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005

11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005

12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006

01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006

02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006

03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006

04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006

05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006

06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006

07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006

08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006

09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006

10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006

11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006

12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007

01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007

02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007

03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007

04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007

05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007

06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007

07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007

08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007

09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007

10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007

11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007

12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008

01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008

02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008

03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008

04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008

05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008

06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008

07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008

08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008

09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008

10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008

11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008

12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009

01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009

02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009

03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009

04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009

05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009

07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009

08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009

09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009

10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009

11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009

12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010

01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010

02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010

03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010

04/01/2010 - 05/01/2010

05/01/2010 - 06/01/2010

06/01/2010 - 07/01/2010

07/01/2010 - 08/01/2010

08/01/2010 - 09/01/2010

09/01/2010 - 10/01/2010

10/01/2010 - 11/01/2010

11/01/2010 - 12/01/2010

12/01/2010 - 01/01/2011

01/01/2011 - 02/01/2011

02/01/2011 - 03/01/2011

03/01/2011 - 04/01/2011

04/01/2011 - 05/01/2011

05/01/2011 - 06/01/2011

07/01/2011 - 08/01/2011

08/01/2011 - 09/01/2011

09/01/2011 - 10/01/2011

10/01/2011 - 11/01/2011

11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011

12/01/2011 - 01/01/2012

01/01/2012 - 02/01/2012

02/01/2012 - 03/01/2012

03/01/2012 - 04/01/2012

04/01/2012 - 05/01/2012

05/01/2012 - 06/01/2012

06/01/2012 - 07/01/2012

07/01/2012 - 08/01/2012

08/01/2012 - 09/01/2012

09/01/2012 - 10/01/2012

10/01/2012 - 11/01/2012

11/01/2012 - 12/01/2012

12/01/2012 - 01/01/2013

01/01/2013 - 02/01/2013

02/01/2013 - 03/01/2013

03/01/2013 - 04/01/2013

04/01/2013 - 05/01/2013

05/01/2013 - 06/01/2013

06/01/2013 - 07/01/2013

07/01/2013 - 08/01/2013

08/01/2013 - 09/01/2013

09/01/2013 - 10/01/2013

10/01/2013 - 11/01/2013

11/01/2013 - 12/01/2013

12/01/2013 - 01/01/2014

01/01/2014 - 02/01/2014

02/01/2014 - 03/01/2014

03/01/2014 - 04/01/2014

06/01/2014 - 07/01/2014

07/01/2014 - 08/01/2014

08/01/2014 - 09/01/2014

09/01/2014 - 10/01/2014

10/01/2014 - 11/01/2014

12/01/2014 - 01/01/2015

02/01/2015 - 03/01/2015

03/01/2015 - 04/01/2015

04/01/2015 - 05/01/2015

05/01/2015 - 06/01/2015

07/01/2015 - 08/01/2015

08/01/2015 - 09/01/2015

11/01/2015 - 12/01/2015

12/01/2015 - 01/01/2016

01/01/2016 - 02/01/2016

05/01/2016 - 06/01/2016

06/01/2016 - 07/01/2016

07/01/2016 - 08/01/2016

08/01/2016 - 09/01/2016

09/01/2016 - 10/01/2016

11/01/2016 - 12/01/2016

12/01/2016 - 01/01/2017

02/01/2017 - 03/01/2017

03/01/2017 - 04/01/2017

04/01/2017 - 05/01/2017

07/01/2017 - 08/01/2017

09/01/2017 - 10/01/2017

01/01/2018 - 02/01/2018

02/01/2018 - 03/01/2018

03/01/2018 - 04/01/2018

04/01/2018 - 05/01/2018

05/01/2018 - 06/01/2018

07/01/2018 - 08/01/2018

08/01/2018 - 09/01/2018

10/01/2018 - 11/01/2018

11/01/2018 - 12/01/2018

12/01/2018 - 01/01/2019

01/01/2019 - 02/01/2019

03/01/2019 - 04/01/2019

05/01/2019 - 06/01/2019

06/01/2019 - 07/01/2019

07/01/2019 - 08/01/2019

10/01/2019 - 11/01/2019

01/01/2020 - 02/01/2020

03/01/2020 - 04/01/2020

04/01/2020 - 05/01/2020

05/01/2020 - 06/01/2020

06/01/2020 - 07/01/2020

07/01/2020 - 08/01/2020

08/01/2020 - 09/01/2020

09/01/2020 - 10/01/2020

11/01/2020 - 12/01/2020

12/01/2020 - 01/01/2021

02/01/2021 - 03/01/2021

03/01/2021 - 04/01/2021

06/01/2021 - 07/01/2021

07/01/2021 - 08/01/2021

09/01/2021 - 10/01/2021

12/01/2021 - 01/01/2022

03/01/2022 - 04/01/2022

04/01/2022 - 05/01/2022

07/01/2022 - 08/01/2022

08/01/2022 - 09/01/2022

09/01/2022 - 10/01/2022

10/01/2022 - 11/01/2022

12/01/2022 - 01/01/2023

01/01/2023 - 02/01/2023

04/01/2023 - 05/01/2023

05/01/2023 - 06/01/2023

06/01/2023 - 07/01/2023

08/01/2023 - 09/01/2023

11/01/2023 - 12/01/2023

12/01/2023 - 01/01/2024

01/01/2024 - 02/01/2024

02/01/2024 - 03/01/2024

05/01/2024 - 06/01/2024

08/01/2024 - 09/01/2024

09/01/2024 - 10/01/2024

12/01/2024 - 01/01/2025

01/01/2025 - 02/01/2025

HOME

Buy Wordsworth, Proust, Baker@Amazon.com

Buy Joe Brainard's I Remember

Try to buy Georges Perec's Je me souviens

. . .