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 more about the pink satin bedspread my father gave my mother one year, for her birthday I think. It had her monogram on it, but one day I realized that the large middle letter was her last initial, and the last letter was her middle initial. I was surprised but they explained that this was how monograms worked. It seemed inelegant to me: I mean the fact of design vs. the ordering of names seemed inelegant. The middle letter was appropriately the largest, but then it couldn't be the middle letter any more. This seemed a discord in the logic of the world.

I remember that after she got that bedspread I was no longer allowed to lie on their made bed. This was a great loss to me.

posted by William 9:39 AM
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I remember that my father had a drawer full of 8 mm film; some reels were of us, some were unused (and expired).

When Hugh C. and I wanted to make a movie we saw that they were expired and went to the specialty camera store to buy more film for my father's camera. But is was so expensive! So we used the expired film and then the owner of the shop got p.o.'d at us when we went to get it developed: he thought we'd just bought some film from elsewhere. I think we got some film back from him eventually, but never figured out how to watch it. All those frames! I somehow thought we could just scan our eyes down the film -- after all we didn't need technology for Hugh's great flip movies.

My father also had some old commercial films -- ten minute shorts (of entertainers) and some cartoons. Cartoons you could watch at home at will! Amazing! But we never figured out how to watch those either, and I don't think my father showed them to us more than once or twice, if that. I just remember those large square flat enticingly colorful boxes in the drawer.

posted by William 2:13 PM
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I remember that Mr. Hanlon, our BC calculus teacher, described Newton's invention of the calculus with reference to lots of real world examples. He said that Newton was first a physicist, then a mathematician. He gave an example one day, and then said, "So don't let anyone kid you into thinking mathematics is the exclusive province of thought." I loved that last phrase. A few days later I was at school early (Mr. Hanlon always was), and we talked a bit about math. He said that something was characteristic of mathemetics. I replied, with a slightly arch tone that would allow me to break either way and that would indicate that I was quoting him if he recognized that I was, without embarrassing him if he didn't, "Yes, the exclusive province of thought." He said, "I've always thought so," which surprised me because he was contradicting what he'd said. And yet I knew he meant it. I could have taken this as a chink in his armor, a vision of his clay feet (he was wonderful and deeply loved), but I think for the first time I realized that what looked like an inconsistency wasn't a weakness. It was range and depth, rather; and my suppression of a slight and deeply regretful impulse to feel a touch superior or more knowing in perceiving this inconsistency that he didn't was an important advance for me: it meant that I could see what was good about Mr. Hanlon beyond idealization or projection. And he was a wonder.

posted by William 6:31 PM
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