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, March 28, 2007

I remember the weirdness of the word "illustration," or maybe "illustrate." I'd describe that weirdness now (though this is not how I would have known to describe it then) as encountering a word that I knew I would never use myself.

posted by william 8:50 PM
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

I remember someone asking me, senior year of high school, "Are you a head?" I didn't know what they meant. This was at the bottom of the hill near Broadway and 250th street or so. We drove there in driver's ed; I remember that Keith Outlaw once slammed on the gas rather than the brakes when Mr. Moran told him to slow down as we approached the intersection, and Mr. Moran quickly slammed on the pedal that he controlled from the passenger's seat. That was scary, but I was impressed with how quickly and successfully he reacted. But this time we were just walking down the same street, and possibly I was smoking a cigarette; certainly it was a non-smoker who asked me. After a brief panic, it became clear that I didn't know what they meant, and then they said that if I didn't know it was because I wasn't. I don't know how I found out the meaning of the term -- this was (just) before headshops became popular or well-known. But I found out within the next few days, and eventually became a head when we visited Boston for the Model U.N. Brent sang "Don't bogart that joint, my friend," which I think is from Easy Rider, or maybe Arlo Guthrie, or both. Well, I didn't really become a head that trip -- I tried pot then but didn't know how to inhale. I think that came a week or two later.

posted by william 10:51 PM
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Thursday, March 22, 2007

I remember that when plastic "gems" in gum-machine rings came out of their bands, there was some odd adhesive that would stick to the bottom of the gem, and that sometimes paper would adhere to it from the setting. But the ring was plastic, so it was surprising that there was this kind of glossy double-ply paper in the setting. I always felt a need to scratch it off, both gem and setting.

posted by william 6:29 PM
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Saturday, March 17, 2007

I remember what I think was a Fabregé commercial, based on the song "Caberet." "And for the men / There's the great smell of Brut!...Come to the Fabregé, my friends / Come to the Fabregé." I'm pretty sure this was a department store, because when I found out about Fabregé eggs later, I was puzzled by them -- why should the Romanovs have them? Why should they be so awe-inspiringly rare and valuable?

posted by william 8:53 AM
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Thursday, March 15, 2007

I remember thinking that underneath one's skin was a layer that was essentially a sheet of blood, like liquid trapped between two panes of glass. I thought that when you cut yourself you breached that area, and that the only difference between cuts was their depth and the amount of skin they opened. I think we learned about veins in third grade or so (arteries later). I remember I was in fifth grade when I scraped my wrist very slightly and worried about bleeding to death (since by then I knew that you could commit suicide by cutting your wrists), because Miss Brenner (after reassuring me that I was fine) told me very kindly about her brother who'd been bitten by a squirrel and was worried about rabies and getting rabies shots. In the end he didn't get them.

posted by william 10:58 PM
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Sunday, March 04, 2007

I remember noticing that my grandparents and great-grandparents pulled the bedcovers over their heads when sleeping. My parents didn't, so I took that as a characteristic of old age. I also worried for their breathing, and told my mother to tell my great-grandfather not to do it. She made me tell him myself, reasoning that he would be more likely to take a child's advice seriously (I suppose out of indulgence). I was sure it would be the opposite (and it was).

posted by sravana 1:39 AM
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Thursday, March 01, 2007

I remember that I was with Tommy, Kenny, and I think even Butch (the youngest) in their parents' bedroom, and they began making prank calls. They'd done that before, but it was new to me. But pretty much no one answered, and when someone did it seemed to be a woman living alone, and there was nothing thrilling about calling. I think I thought it would be a way of taking some swell down a peg. But we didn't reach any swells. After a while, Sally (their mother) came in and made us stop. She didn't seem too concerned about any of it though.

posted by william 12:01 AM
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