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 New Orleans. I remember my mother taking me to there. We stayed at the Monteleone, and I took a black ashtray. I remember Royal Street, Bourbon Street, the Garden District (where Andy Apter, Michael Kelley and I stayed on Freret street with a friend of Michael's, a slide guitar player, after my mother had flown back to New York), Buster's, Antoine's (where back then they took your order without writing it down, though that changed later), the Court of the Two Sisters, Preservation Hall (where we watched some people ahead of us in line looking at a mouse in the gutter staring back at them), and Brennan's, Jackson Square, the French Market, some addict fiddle players whom Andy played with, the street cars, the above ground cemeteries, the magnolias, the "neutral ground" between the two directions of the avenues. I remember walking from the Garden District to the French Quarter with Michael and Andy, past where the Superdome was being built, and having kids throw rocks at us from maybe fifty yards behind us -- a weird and serious but not quite real danger.

posted by william 12:25 AM
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I remember when I was about 8 years old, my downtown grandparents were taking care of us and my grandfather was supposed to walk me the ten blocks down West End Ave to school. But after a few blocks he said he had an appointment and wondered if I could walk the rest of the way myself. I was surprised, ambivalent but also encouraged by this sudden acknowledgement of my capability, so I said OK. I walked on and stopped diligently at every corner waiting for the light to turn green. There was almost no traffic. At one corner the light was red but as no cars were in sight, I finally crossed anyway. When I had almost arrived at school I happened to glance across West End Ave and saw that my grandfather was walking on the opposite side of the street, a few feet behind. When he saw he had been discovered he came over and revealed that he was just checking to see if I was able to walk by myself. This little test was a wonderful lesson on responsibility and trust - for us both!

posted by caroline 4:23 AM
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I remember learning about Peter Stuyvesant and New Amsterdam, and Amsterdam itself. For me Amsterdam was the name of the avenue I crossed to get to P.S. 166, wide and different from the more familiar North-South avenues I knew because it was one-way. It was odd to think that a feature so much a part of my daily routine should be related to a city in Europe, one that still existed but also stood for the past. My sister found $20 in the Amsterdam airport, in the men's room where my father took her, but I have no memory of the airport at all.

posted by william 12:19 AM
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I remember 'Maaza is veri veri extraordinari.' I couldn't figure out why it was spelled so badly, or why the tagline was so lame.

I remember that Maaza was considered less unhealthy than carbonated drinks, so people generally bought it for their kids while drinking cola or orange soda (Thumbs Up, Gold Spot) themselves.

I remember my parents would give me Limca ('lime-and-lemony-Limca...') when I got carsick on long drives, because lemons are good for nausea. I doubt they actually use lemons in the soda -- at any rate, it usually made me feel worse.

I remember that a distant uncle owned (or had a large share in) the Thumbs Up-Gold Spot-Limca-Citra-Maaza brands, before they were bought by Coca-Cola. He was (is) known as 'Gold Spot Sathyanarayan.' I wondered why they picked that rather than 'Thumbs Up S...', since that was the most popular drink of the lot. I guess 'Gold Spot' had a fortune-making ring to it.

posted by sravana 3:09 PM
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I remember the subway ad for the Roach Motel "Roaches check in but they never check out!" It was one of those collective jokes which united New Yorkers in the common cause against the enemy. "We're pretty sneaky, aren't we?" it conveyed. Us against them.
I also remember the public service spots on TV with the kid jumping on a diving board several times to get height and the sound off splashing water and laughing and playing, but then cut to an empty swimming pool and silence - the message being "don't use drugs--you don't know what you are jumping into..."
I also remember the spot with a little girl calling "here, kitty, kitty, kitty!" and it turned out to be a rat she was coaxing with her piece of bread.
These two spots most probably contributed to me deciding to work with film.
I also remember begging my mother and brother to let me go with them to see the film about Sacco and Venzetti who were unfairly tried and sent to the electric chair.
My mother and brother thought I was too young for the film, but I loved it and was outraged at the injustice.
I also remember seeing the Apu trilogy with them and loving it. Satjajit Ray has most definitely influenced my film career and I mention him and the Apu trilogy in a book I wrote a chapter for as well as an article.
Glad mom and Billy brought me along!

posted by caroline 7:34 AM
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I remember when Kismet was showing, roughly the same time as Man of La Mancha. I seem to recall the taxi ads, with a heart over the i in the word, and of course I thought it had something to do with kissing. Only years later, reading Merrill, did I realize it meant fate. I have no idea what the musical (?) was about. I wonder whether Merrill used the word because it was plastered all over New York contemporaneously with his writing.

posted by william 7:38 AM
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I remember / je me souviens
I remember walking past my son and downtown grandmother as they sat at the table at our country house and played the card came "Tatch" (a yugoslavien(?) game which my grandmother played with me as a kid, and which I loved).
From across the room I smiled at them playing, but suddenly I got all choked up and had to hurry out so they wouldn't see I was crying. I KNEW that this was the last summer I'd see my grandmother. I KNEW that she wouldn't live the whole year till the next summer.
The next summer came and we boarded the plane to come over to the States, as usual. I remember feeling glad my intuition had been wrong, and that I'd see Granny again...

My father was waiting for us when we arrived at Kennedy. He had a solemn look on his face and pulled me aside as soon as I was within reach to tell me that Granny had died while we were en route...

I've always KNOWN certain things like that, and another time I KNEW was when Billy had his life threatening water-skiing accident. Our parents had to make the decision to fly him by helicopter to NY for surgery. I was about 13 and Granny and I stayed in the country. Looking back now I can see the degree of torment she tried to hide from me back then. I remember lying in bed and she stroking my hair to comfort me. I remember feeling that she didn't need to console me since I was sure he'd be ok. I said, "I KNOW he'll be fine". I must have conveyed the conviction I felt, because she asked, somewhat provoked, "How can you KNOW?" "I just KNOW". This soothed her.

posted by caroline 5:12 PM
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I remember / je me souviens
I remember when we would drive to the country house in the winter or colder months and arrive late at night. I had usually fallen asleep in the car and I remember the contrast of leaving the warm, dark car and entering the cold, lit-up house. Groggy from the car trip, I'd wait in my jacket for the house to warm up enough for me to take off my clothes and get into bed, the sheets of which were still cold. When they finally warmed up, I could sleep the night.

posted by caroline 4:50 PM
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I remember the swings in the houses of older relatives. Usually on the porch, but sometimes in the drawing room. The idea didn't seem right to me. Swings belonged in the playground, and were meant to go far and high... they weren't consistent with these staid pieces of furniture with cushions that were rocked frustratingly gently. And the adults would sometimes tell the kids to go play on the 'swing' if they looked bored -- which again seemed like they were confusing the kids' ideal of a swing with theirs.

Which makes me remember a poem in our English reader in 3rd or 4th grade, about swinging so high that it felt like moving forward in space, like running over the fields and traveling to distant countries. There was an illustration of a girl standing up on the swing (which was a lot more fun, once you conquered the initial hesitation). And a poem in the Hindi reader the same year about swinging, but with not the same exhilaration, illustrated with a porch swing. I loved the song, Dil Kya Kare from the 70s' Julie movie, but hadn't (still haven't) seen it, so 'julie' in the lyrics brought to mind a swing (jhula) instead. I imagined they were on one during the song. I guess I ended up making a language as well as an age separation for the swings.

posted by sravana 12:30 AM
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I remember that the one compensation for getting back home in the summer was going through the tons of mail that had been kept for us downstairs, looking for the brown-paper-wrapped comic books and New Yorkers that had come in the interim. At that time there wasn't any other mail that I was really interested in, not even the Sports Illustrateds that I subscribed to but read somewhat half-heartedly because I was only interested in the New York teams, and besides the news was all out of date. I thought the swimsuit issue was the most boring of all -- everything frustrating about Playboy, with none of the good parts. But the comics and the cartoons were worth looking forward to.

posted by william 7:12 AM
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I remember sitting in the car going to the country and Billy showing me a black and white photo in his (biology?) book of two hands -- with six fingers each. I remember not noticing that there were six fingers until he pointed it out to me, and how awed I was at how privledged being older and having a textbook could be (they never gave US that textbook, I may add).

I also remember watching the Twilight Zone and Creature Features at the Hoges' house on 2H. All of which was over my head, but I was determined to stick it out. The Hoge boys had a triple(!) bunk bed and we used to jump from first the second bunk, but then the top bunk, onto a pile of cushions. After a while we took the cushions away and jumped onto the bare floor.

I also remember Billy teaching me how to jump down from a high rock in Riverside Park at around 82nd street. A feat of utmost proportions.

I also remember in Quogue with the Hoges how there was a sand depot and we used to play on the piles of sand and run up and jump down. It was so incredibly fun and adventurous. I was SO disappointed when the adults said it was dangerous and we weren't allowed to anymore....I still resent that they took away such fun!!!

posted by caroline 5:04 PM
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I remember that the adults sometimes used to sleep with their knees up, making a pyramid or cone -- a triangle, I thought of it -- with their sheets or blankets. I was surprised they could sleep without lying entirely flat. When I was a teenager I discovered this was comfortable; but maybe it wasn't before.

posted by william 7:07 AM
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I remember / je me souviens
I remember the small dishes with balls of rolled butter and melting ice they served in Bellagio, and eating breakfast out on the terrace in the sunny mornings. Crispy white rolls with that sweet butter and fragrant strawberry jam. Runny golden honey with crystalized grains on the rim. The sound of the sleepy waiter pouring hot cocoa from silver pitchers. White starched tableclothes reflecting the bright sun and the weight of the thick linen napkins on my bare legs. Swatting away the bees which always landed yellow and black on the red jam.

The mornings always felt like walking on tip-toe in reverence to the evening before, when the same terrace was full of adults' talk and laughter and wine glasses clinking and music and ballroom dancing. The breakfasts were more hush, a pretence at starting anew, but the dizzy evening somehow lingered there.

posted by caroline 3:57 AM
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I remember / je me souviens
I remeber how you told me about a man who had tried to fly into outerspace in a regular airplane and how the air got too thin and he crashed to the ground. I remeber we were at Granny's house in the living-room when you told me. Maybe I remeber it because my body felt what it was like to be up high since Granny lived on the 11th floor and we were used to the seventh. It was vertigo to be on her balcony and look down at the playground and wish you could just fly down there.. Anyway, the airplane story made me sad since he was so close to, in my mind, succeeding in penetrating the atmosphere- much closer to heaven than to earth, and then plummeting all the way down. That the air was too thin is what made me sad, and that we was so close...It was my first Icarus story -- it still makes me sad.

posted by caroline 8:00 AM
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I remember / je me souviens
I remember how my older and wiser brother Billy would challenge me to race him up 90th street between Riverside and West End Ave. I got a horrible stitch in my side. Billy insisted that the best remedy for this was to keep on running as fast as I could. Brother knows best?

posted by caroline 7:06 AM
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I remember one time I was particularly unwell, and being taken to get blood tests done, and feeling so weak and out of breath I couldn't change to go out, or even move or talk easily while at the clinic. It was a little scary that something essentially like fatigue could paralyse my body so much. I was a little delirious too, so there was a contrast between (what felt like) light and clear thinking and my physical sluggishness. But I was pleasantly surprised that the doctors treated me so normally, didn't react with either contempt or sympathy to what I imagined must look like strange behaviour.

posted by sravana 2:26 PM
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I remember the little flies (or large gnats) that used to get into the bath-water, floating on surface tension, and onto the porcelain or marble fixtures and into the soap dish and the soap, in Bellagio. I haven't thought about this for decades. I hated them; there would only be two or three, but there would always be two or three. They seemed to pollute the otherwise pure and clear water in the large white tubs in the luminous spacious bathroom, and I kept wanting to try again, but they were always there. I could feel very clean after a bath, and after my parents dried my off in the white towels of the hotel, but it took avoiding the flies, thinking somehow that if I didn't touch them not only would they not affect me, but I wouldn't dirty them; that contact was what had to be avoided, since somehow that would vitiate the whole bath; but that if I avoided contact then somehow they would be clean in the water too, and everything would be o.k. They were probably ephemerae (are they called?), and now the whole thing strikes me as so young, young like myself, and like the young flies that somehow stand for that long-ago youth, untouched and so sustained, at least during those days, those evenings, those early-evening baths.

posted by william 9:33 AM
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I remember that not only did I get versions of current movies that I hadn't seen from the MAD Magazine parodies that were good enough for me to be in conversations about the movies themselves, but also that my first introduction to some Shakespeare came from MAD. In particular I remember versions of Shakespeare speeches updated to contemporary lingo -- well maybe not quite contemporary but a Beat parody of contemporary. I remember Brutus's speech turned into one with this refrain: "But Caesar was a real cool cat." Except, that, now that I think about it, it must have been Antony's speech, addressed I think to "Brothers!", and that "But Brutus is an honorable man" was rendered "But Brutus is a real cool cat." Now I think I remember it this way, that is that I am recovering the accurate memory, but I didn't until now.

posted by william 5:12 PM
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