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

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

I remember "So good it shouts with flavor: chocolate, Chocolate, CHOCOLATE!" But what was?

posted by william 10:01 PM
. . . 1 comments

Saturday, May 21, 2005

I remember, barely, the cop on the beat whom I would see on West End and 90th, and who somehow reminded me of our doormen -- or maybe the doormen reminded me of cops. This was in the days of Officer Joe Bolton, and before the police started cruising in squad cars. I remember him as kind of over the hill, gangly, goggle-eyed (I think he wore glasses) Adams-appled, a little bit like Don Knotts, only more so. I remember the police call box on 90th and West End, and have a vague memory of another, beefier cop, calling in one day, talking into the lamppost, into the box at mouth height. At the time, lampposts had all sorts of gadgets on them -- fire alarms, call boxes, other electrical boxes, maybe junction boxes, maybe occasional small mail boxes.

posted by william 11:14 PM
. . . 0 comments

Thursday, May 19, 2005

I remember getting (maybe shoplifting from The New Yorker Bookshop) Robin Wood's book on Hitchcock, because all my friends had seen The Birds and I hadn't. The book was green with a shot, from Psycho, I think, on the cover. Unfortunately it didn't plot summarize the movie, and I couldn't make head or tail of it.

posted by william 9:09 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember more: that you were asked to "please stand by for station identification."

posted by william 9:08 PM
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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

I remember radio station's pausing for "station identification." I was never sure why or how, though I knew it had to do with the call letters. But I loved the phrase, the quiet and reasonable way that it rhymed, the way it held the rhyme off for four syllables and then reprised station in -cation. Do they still pause for this rhyme?

posted by william 8:31 PM
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Saturday, May 14, 2005

I remember Duffy Dyer (and how I kind of thought he was the Daffy Duck second stringer to Jerry Grote. But I liked his name better.) I remember thinking of him somehow as his mask and chest-protector. His name was so iuntransparent that it seemed to correspond perfectly to his shell of protective equipment. They represented the name, and the name represented that. And he seemed so game and cheerful and uncomplaining about being that equivalence with his equipmental surface, being, as it were, defined by his back-up catcher equipment.

posted by william 10:23 PM
. . . 0 comments

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

I remember learning about the great Brooklyn-born matador... Franklin? Do I remember that because I was at Franklin School? I picture him -- accurately -- with glasses, sort of like Buddy Holly or the kid murdered by Leopold and Loeb -- ??. Stephen Grotsky, our favorite history teacher and track coach, admired him intensely, and told us about him when in a spellbinding reverie about matadors in general (but maybe it was Mr. Donahue, since he was the one who had us reading Hemingway, I think, and taught us the word aficionado and told us about Death in the Afternoon; I now realize he may have just been reading it), and how they would kneel with their backs to the bull, and try to get two ears and a tail, all information relevant as well to The Sun Also Rises.

posted by william 7:05 AM
. . . 0 comments

Monday, May 09, 2005

I remember two interesting news items from when I first started reading the newspaper. One was that a Japanese soldier had just surrendered, decades after the end of the war. He'd been left on some remote (though not uninhabited) island with orders to stay there, and stay he did. He lived in caves and ate bugs, roots, and rats, I believe. He was finally found, a very old man (how old? maybe not as old as I thought of him as being then), and informed that the war was long over, although Hirohito was still Emperor. I couldn't imagine this Rip Van Winkle / Gilligan's Island private war.

The other news item I remember was the scientists were looking for a very heavy element, one they thought was stable (unlike all those bizarre elements I'd somehow space out about at the bottom right of the periodic table), in medieval Russian stained glass. They thought that the medieval stainers might have found some and used it. I don't think this ever came to anything.

posted by william 12:55 PM
. . . 0 comments

Sunday, May 08, 2005

I remember being puzzled that my parents wanted me to call my grandmothers on Mother's Day. After all, they were their mothers. Now I wish I could.

posted by william 8:31 AM
. . . 0 comments

Thursday, May 05, 2005

I remember: "At Beneficial, you're good for more; at Beneficial, you're good for more. No matter where you may be borrowing, or had a loan before.... Call Beneficial, See Beneficial, ____ Beneficial! At Beneficial, you're good for more, badadadadoop!" I think I remember this mainly from the Yankees broadcasts, maybe even on the radio.

posted by william 12:18 AM
. . . 0 comments

Monday, May 02, 2005

I remember that public bathrooms in New York City playgrounds were called comfort stations. I liked the name -- somehow it reminded me of my downtown grandmother. (Or maybe that's because there were comfort stations on the grounds of the Union cooperative housing development where she lived in Chelsea. I seem to recall them, and recall very well the masonry lattice work of the wall separating the grounds from the truck driveway between them and the Cooperative supermarket where she shopped, where they had Cooperative Milk and cheese and such like.) I knew immediately what comforst stations were, and I liked the idea that they provided comfort -- that you could comfort yourself by peeing ot that it was a comfort to know that they were there, or that the grand and gigantic city of New York was offering to comfort you. They're still called comfort stations in New York, but I don't know whether they have that name anywhere else. I don't think the subway bathrooms had that name; at any rate I remember that the bathrooms in the 96th street station were always closed.

posted by william 9:06 AM
. . . 0 comments

Sunday, May 01, 2005

I remember that my great-great-grandmother had one or two large torches (flashlights) always with her. She'd use them if she needed to get up at night, although she could have just flicked on a light switch –- I suppose she was more comfortable with having light at hand, after using lamps and candles to light her night way for most of her life. For a long time, I associated flashlights with her, because I didn't see them much in any other context. Also, having interacted with her so little, I probably needed an object association to remember her at all.

posted by sravana 12:23 AM
. . . 0 comments

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