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 the noon siren, which I posted about a little three years ago. You could hear it everywhere, and to me it seemed to be coming from the East, always Parkwards from wherever I was on ninetieth street. (I remember always hearing it on 90th and West End.) It was somehow the sound of the unity of the city. I had (and have) no idea where the sound was coming from: there were no klaxons anywhere that I could see, nor did I think to look for them. It was just part of what filled the air in New York at noon, everywhere, indiscriminately, part of the sense of general, calm, all-embracing security and method and purpose and benign convenience. I miss the noon sirens.

posted by william 11:41 PM
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