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, again, what I posted about over three years ago, since I am so struck by what my father just told me about the day they heard of his brother's death (reported in the comment on the last entry). My uncle had to stand up to dig into his pocket to give the soldier next to him some ammunition (which they were short of), my grandmother said. He stood up (I imagined him not taking the shelter behind a tree in a kind of pleasant Northeast forest as he might have) and was shot by a Japanese soldier. Thinking about this now, I realize that my picture of what happened was implausible. I remember the immense frustration of getting something out of your front pockets when you were lying down . Your pockets were flattened against the countours of your thighs. You had to wriggle and force just two or three fingers into your pockets, and could never reach the thing you were trying to get. This made getting coins out hard; was ammunition similar? I thought also that it was the kind of thing where a large object down in your pocket cinched the top tight. But that's not where you would keep ammunition. I remember also that this was really a dress-pants problem -- creased, iron, woolen, uncomfortable, and so I imagined him in the kind of pants I hated most, frustrated, getting up, fumbling, and then mortally wounded.

I think I already knew that phrase -- mortally wounded -- from the kids' edition of Beowulf my mother read to me which had an illustration of Beowulf squeezing Grendel's wrists fo tightly that he was "mortally wounded." I don't think that edition actually showed Beowulf pulling off his arms, and I was fascinated that Beowulf could kill Grendel simply by squeezing his wrists. Somehow I associate thinking about that moment with my grandmother's lobby, which probably comes from associating the phrase with my uncle as well.

posted by william 7:00 AM
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