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

Friday, January 20, 2006

I remember learning the idiom "take the plunge." I had a habit of getting into terrible trouble at school, and being told to tell my parents, but not doing so, so that twice they found out I was in trouble by going to parent-teacher conferences, and hearing from the teachers. One of those teachers, the next day, was surprised and disappointed with me that I hadn't told them. (Later on I once left a note describing what I'd been caught doing, and made a faint-hearted attempt to run away from home, that lasted about an hour.)

Once I was sternly and implacably instructed (I'm not sure by whom) that I had to tell them the trouble I was in (I don't know what it was), and told that if I didn't tell them, and the school had to, I would be in even more trouble. I think either I was in trouble a lot, or I tended to do the most outrageous things right before parent-teacher conferences. So at dinner I tried to make a virtue of necessity by showing my parents that I was now an honest person willing to discuss trouble that I'd gotten into, without being forced to do it. I told them what it was (reconstructing it now, I think it might have had to do with my cutting Bar Mitzvah lessons), but not that I had been required to tell them. They were angry but slightly impressed with me too, and my mother explained to my father that I'd decided to take the plunge and tell them. I was afraid that the next day, when they spoke to my teachers, they'd find out I had been required to do so, but they didn't, so I got a little credit for confessing before I was questioned. I remember that previous night, sitting at the dinner table in trouble, but finding "take the plunge" interesting enough that thinking about it was a way to take mental shelter from my parents' anger.

posted by william 8:52 AM
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