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

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

I remember one time there was a party at the dojo after class on Saturday. I didn't know it was coming, but after I got out of the locker room it was all set up. My adult white-belt friend was hanging out with the Sensei and with lots of other students, both kids and adults. There was lots of party food in the entry area (not on the exercise floor, of course). The sensei was sitting at his desk, relaxed, having a good time, very different from usual. Then as I was getting ready to go, they delivered pizza, so I hung out some more.

They were listening to a tape of classical music with the pizza. I heard my white-belt friend say, "Hear that? Every performance has mistakes in it." The sensei rewound the tape and we all listened to the violinist scrape his bow in some spasm of unintentional motion. I had never been able to hear the differences between performances before -- in vain did my grandmothers take me to hear Serkin and Rubenstein (though I liked their kindly looks). But this was a mistake I could hear, and I was proud of that -- not proud that I could hear it, because it was obvious, but proud to be part of the group of people listening to this tape and all hearing the same obvious lapse.

The party was still in full swing when I went home -- I didn't want my family to wonder where I was. But it turned out to be early evening when I got there (I didn't have a watch, so I had no idea what time it was). My grandmother was beside herself. I'd thought I was about half an hour late. But I'd spend four extra hours at the dojo. That afternoon was one of the best times I'd ever had: it just slipped away in fun.

posted by william 8:46 AM
. . . 0 comments

Monday, February 16, 2009

I remember telling my chemistry teacher, Mr. Reeves, also the soccer coach, about the story my grandmother had just told me (in eleventh or twelfth grade) about her cousin. This cousin, whom I called and think of as "my grandmother's cousin," had a friend who was seduced by a charismatic madman, who suggested a suicide pact. The friend declined, so the intense young man turned his attentions to my grandmother's cousin, who succumbed to his charms and his authoritative vocation for transcendence. He shot her and then shot himself.

This was all new to me, this cliché of excessively tormented adolescent eroticism, and I remember Mr. Reeves listening politely but not quite with enough interest. But it was a true story, and I don't know even now why he wasn't more interested (though maybe I'd respond the same way now in his position): at the time it seemed somewhat natural, though disappointing, that he wasn't engaged by what was after all just personal family history. But this cousin was so distant from me that I didn't think of her as part of my family, and yet I was interested. But maybe this was mainly because it came from my grandmother, who knew her, and deplored what she'd done.

Later the story of Kleist's death seemed familiar in just the same way that so many of the fairy tales and scary stories my grandmother told me were familiar when I reread them in Freud. There was something surprising about returning to that archaic culture -- archaic for me as well as for the world -- when discussing the reading with Paul de Man. And he was no more interested in my family, it turned out, than Mr. Reeves had been.

posted by william 10:04 AM
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Friday, February 13, 2009

I remember Lindsay Nelson, I think it was, calling a Mets game on the radio. Probably in 1969 or 1970. I was walking Powell down the big hill on 91st street and listening to the game on my transistor radio. Bud Harrelson took three grounders that inning, and threw out the runner three times, once at second and twice at first maybe. Lindsay Nelson said, "...and Bud Harrleson with three assists in the inning. That ties a record." I liked that quick, wry, lazy, afternoon notation: the routine ways records get tied in baseball.

posted by william 5:51 PM
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Sunday, February 08, 2009

I remember the prefects when I was in middle school -- all-knowing, composed, and in some ways more adult than parents and teachers. I remember the authority associated with their names (always in full) when called out during school ceremonies. (I also remember thinking, much earlier, that "investiture" was spelt "investeacher", having something to do with leadership.) I remember how, in 6th grade, every second person had a crush on a prefect (and how you had to, to be considered cool), and using 'fan' as a transitive verb to denote that relationship.

posted by sravana 2:51 AM
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