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 that I learned the phrase "on purpose" from Tommy Hoge. I guess it was something they said a lot in their house, that for some reason we didn't say in ours. I remember it first as an accusation, not a defense. It's one of those phrases that Austin should have analyzed: always in the negative in the first person ("I didn't do it on purpose"), usually not negated in second or third person ("You did that on purpose!"). I think Tommy accused me of doing something on purpose, and I associate learning the phrase both with his bunkbed (shared with Ken) and with their father's den, where we would hang out. I remember that I was struck (as with shirk) that the word struck me as incongruous and funny, because I already knew the word porpoise.

My mother loved porpoises, and made me love them. Since after Flipper I tend to prefer using the word dolphin, as sounding more streamlined, I always associate the word with her, and her porpoise-like kindness and love. So it was odd to have that word flung at me in distorted accusation, odd to hear it come out of Tommy's mouth. (I think this same oddness still distantly haunts me when I read in Paradise Lost how God placed Adam and Eve in Eden "with purpose to assay" if Satan can pervert them and make them fall. How unlike my mother!)

posted by william 9:52 AM
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