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 / 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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