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

Sunday, December 04, 2005

I remember one of those events which to children seem a tragedy. When I was a little girl in Yugoslavia, I dressed like all other little girls (except for Muslim ones). We wore short dresses with a yoke which had a seam across the chest. From the yoke the folds of the dress fell to the hem, without marking the waist. In other words, little girls' dresses were an unglamorous, flatchested version of Empire- style dresses which a Jane Austen heroine might have worn. We also wore lace-up shoes up to the ankle. My mother was particularly insistent that I wear those, thinking that I would end up with thinner ankles when I grew up. I remember having scuffed brown ones for every day and fancy ones consisting of black patent leather at the botton and soft gray leather at the top.

At any rate, when we ran away from Sarajevo for good, in 1941, we first went to Split, on the Adriatic. We rented a room from a widow with two sons, on whom I promply developed a crush. I tended to prefer Drago, the older, who might then have been 19, and whom I considered more interesting and more suitable to my own age of close to 10; but the younger, Miro, aged 15, was also acceptable. My mother had a dress made for me which for the first time marked the waist. I put it on, feeling grown up and glamorous, and looking forward to the admiration of the boys when they got home. My elation was short-lived, though. My mother insisted that I wear my usual lace-up shoes even though, by that time, I had also acquired a pair of shoes like Mary Janes, the height of sophistication. No amount of begging would sway my mother. I think I was too embarrassed to tell her of my sentimental problems and finally had to obey her. I don't think I have ever hated an item of clothing as much as those lace-up shoes which, in my mind, fairly screamed "Child!" I am really amused now by young girls' choice of work boots which look a lot like my old nemesis, though some have platforms.

posted by alma 9:54 PM
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