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

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

I remember agent 86. I remember Marc Bilgray wrote a parody of "Get Smart" whose hero was called "Maxwell House Dumb." I remember 99, and that she was glamorous, so one didn't know why she liked Max, the Chief, the cone of silence, Kaos and Control, and the agent who was always so good at disguises. And Maxwell Smart's shoe phone. I remember that I didn't realize the phone booth whose door he closed in the credits was an elevator until I read one of the books. I thought he was just ducking. But why I didn't know. RIP.

posted by william 10:06 PM
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Monday, September 26, 2005

I remember learning about "hands up." I think I knew it from cartoons, and then my mother or father explained that it was so you couldn't reach for your gun. I thought that was really clever. When we played it -- I think it was Cathy and Nina and I -- we'd reach all the way up, as in the cartoons. But later in movies it turned out that you only made your arms into L-shapes. This seemed more mature, more adult, more knowing, competent -- the cowboys who stood with their upraised arms half-relaxed had expertise which I didn't, and which I was now learning.

posted by william 8:47 AM
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Saturday, September 24, 2005

I remember "First one in," when you served for the first time in a tennis game, and then a little later adult friends of my mothers whom I would play with called it F.B.I., "first ball in." I remember when tennis was a glamorous and obscure game to me, played on red clay courts, and then later when it was a game I loved, but no longer glamorous and obscure. When it was still a mystery to me, one of the things I loved about the equipment were the racket presses, things people not only knew how to use, but of which they knew what the use was.

posted by william 11:37 PM
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Sunday, September 18, 2005

I remember another public service spot with the song : "Don't cross the street in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle of the block!" with a girl playing jacks behind a parked car that then starts to back up.. Or am I condensing too spots into one? The song seems incongruous with the picture, now that I write it down.
At age 12 or 13 I was with my downtown grandfather in Chelsea and he was going to check if it was safe to cross in the middle of the block of a one way street . He had me stay safely on the sidewalk and he walked out to look beyond the parked cars to see if any traffic was coming before he would wave to me to follow suit. What he didn't see (but I did) was that a van parked 25 yards ahead was backing up full speed, for some reason (there were no cars parked between the van and the cars my grandfather was peering behind). I tried to equate if the van would hit my grandfather or if he would make it beyond the parked car in time. The van ended up swiping him and he sent him reeling, completely stunned, and I imagine bashed up a bit--it was a hard hit...But he managed to somehow keep on his feet. I'm SURE because I was in his care and he would never let himself lose control... The driver rushed out to help him-- and my grandfather yelled at him for not having watched where he was going. I was not to tell Granny or anyone what had happened, but of course I told mom later. She asked if I had screamed -- but I hadn't--partly because it would have been embarrassing to scream, which I hate admitting, but at 12 one's priorities were different...But, more comforting to think, I was in such confidence that my grandfather knew what he was doing and everything would be all right. And luckily it did turn out all right.

posted by caroline 3:46 PM
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I remember that the thing about noticing my grandfather violate the family rule about crossing streets was that it was a transgression of a boundary I thought impermeable between our customs and those of other people when they differed from ours. I remember, for example, the Hoges using whipped butter, which we never did and which just seemed wrong, as wrong as still others' use of margarine; that we had fresh squeezed orange juice, where others -- even the Herings! -- had frozen, which my father was explicitly against, or store-bought. I remember seeing Colgate in other people's bathrooms, when we used only Crest (the only one then approved by the American Dental Association). I remember that we didn't eat peanut butter and jelly, when they did, or eat Wonderbread either. I remember that we had salad every night, and rarely had desert (though we had ice cream on Comet Cones when my father was working late and my mother wasn't). I remember that we always ate with our parents when they were home, which other kids didn't. I remember we took baths, and at night; other kids took showers, and often in the morning.

All of this was as right as my grandmothers' phone numbers, and the voices you'd know would answer. And then my grandfather ignored the rules, thrillingly and -- though it's too strong a word -- shatteringly. And those voices won't answer either, though I still remember the numbers.

(I don't remember, I just realized, my downtown grandmother's old number, before they moved to Chelsea. But I do remember learning the new one: AL5-4895, adding Algonquin to the list of exchanges that till then for me only included the wonderful strange Trafalger, and my uptown grandmother's Wadsworth. Hugh's Endicott was next, then Murray Hill, and finally Butterfield, when I met the Sterns. The Chelsea number was the first number I remember actually learning. Trafalgar: it sounded liks something from my uptown grandmother's Austrian language, especially the way she pronounced it, trilling the R. It's association with English history was a real surprise to me.)

posted by william 12:43 AM
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Friday, September 16, 2005

I remember we held hands, crossed at the corners, and with the lights; my father was inflexible on this rule, and the rest of the caretakers followed suit. Hugh Cramer was allowed to cross by himself, which he did in the middle, and against the light as well. So our rule seemed one of the family standards of virtue. I was surprised therefore when my downtown grandfather, taking me to Riverside Park once, crossed Riverside Drive in the middle of the block (between 89th and 90th) and against the light, dragging me with him. The transgression was real and vivid, and somehow it made the family members seem at once more impressively like the world at large and less reliable as the very essence of the rules of life, more aware than I knew they were but with the limitations of their authority over the world, or over authority itself, defined by just that awareness.

posted by william 9:52 PM
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I remember that when we went to the movies, the heads in front of me always blocked my view of part of the screen, like a fringe of out-of-focus carpenter's gothic. My father always sat us towards the back in the middle of the row, and I saw no reason (then) for not sitting in the front; but none of the people we disturned in the aisles seemed to mind or even be puzzled by where we were going to sit. But then I'd worry about the heads; and yet somehow when the movie started they became invisible and I forgot they were there.

posted by william 6:31 PM
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Sunday, September 11, 2005

I remember the song "Just another day." I remember walking through the plaza between the buildings of the WTC, on some visit downtown, I think when I was in college. I remember how you could see them from way out on I-80 peaking over the horizon behind which was the rest of New York.

posted by william 1:23 PM
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I remember to fill goldfish bowls only half-way, so that the water gets maximum surface area at the diameter of the bowl. I found this really interesting. It was also when I had fish that I learned that they don't breath the O in the H₂O but rather dissolved oxygen, which is why they need the maximum surface area.

posted by william 12:56 AM
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Thursday, September 08, 2005

I remember "This package is sold by weight, not by volume. It contains the full amount displayed on the package. [This second sentence is hazy.] Some settling of contents may have occured during shipping and handling." What one reads at breakfast. Also, "Not one word has been ommitted," from Pocket Books, which seemed impressive to me at the time.

posted by william 8:56 PM
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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

I remember the blind man who lived in our neighborhood. He tapped with his cane on the curb --his way of "asking" someone to help him over the street. When I was young I always avoided him, my bad conscience painfully visible, I believed, even to the blind man two corners away. But finally I matured enough to approach him and ask if he wanted help crossing the street. He was very charming and said I had a beautiful voice and asked if I was a singer. His friendliness made me glad and the next time I saw him I did not hesitate to help him. "Oh , you are the singer!" he said in recognition.
Here in Sweden the traffic light-posts have a clicking sound which tells blind people when the light is red or green. I always think of him when I hear the light turn green-- he wouldn't have needed me here in Sweden.
I also remember the old lady outside the nursing home in a wheelchair with a plaid blanket on her knee and silver hair in a bun. A classic old lady. She was always so glad when I came from school and said hello. I'm not sure that she spoke English, but I think she called my schnooksy: She smiled and pinched my cheeks - I always assumed she was a relative.
I remember not seeing her for a long time and wondering where she was. It took me until I was an adult to realize that she must have died.
I included this memory of her in a lecture I held about mentors, and the blind man was in a poem I once wrote. Now they are both remembered in the same blog.

posted by caroline 3:59 AM
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Tuesday, September 06, 2005

I remember Gilligan, little buddy.

posted by william 4:53 PM
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