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, September 28, 2010

I remember George Blanda, one of those players who played from the paleohistory of the world as it was well before my life began all the way into my adulthood. He played in color, and on TV. But there were dozens of famous, grainy pictures of him in black and white, some just blown up frames form super-eight movies.

posted by William 1:55 PM
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Monday, September 27, 2010

I remember writing an essay about gender and abandonment in The Grapes of Wrath. It was eleventh grade, while I was living in Israel. The paper was not assigned. The novel was not assigned. I missed my friends, my life in America, myself, so much that year that I read their literature curriculum (except Hamlet--which I was supposed to be reading in Hebrew in school) and wrote the paper because I wanted to. Our friend Alan Rosen, who taught (teaches) English at Bar Ilan, read the essay, and spent a long time discussing it with me. After that, he invited me to attend one of his American Lit classes; I remember loving his discussion of Billy Budd.

posted by Rosasharn 10:29 AM
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Sunday, September 26, 2010

I remember a few sukkahs from my youth: the one on the top of a low part of the building where Bnai Jeshrun is housed, on 89th st. It was a sort of roof-top area which was usually closed, though I guess it was intended either for a garden or for kids to play handball. (I still think of that as a kind of intent, because I think of the city as an intended but natural place, that is intended for whatever uses it lent itself to.) I was impressed by the size and beauty of the Bnai Jeshrun one, though I don't think I ever ate in it or saw anyone do so. But sukkahs were few and far between in New York.

And I remember one that the Sterns family put up at their house. It had an esrog hanging, with lots of clove, and it smelled really wonderful. We did eat there, at least once. Geoffrey told me the esrog was the fruit that Eve and Adam ate, and it made me happy to have that grandly esoteric knowledge.

posted by William 12:12 AM
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

I remember posting an early entry here about jill johnston, nine years ago. RIP.

posted by William 12:50 AM
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

I remember for the first time in years that my black (or was it yellow?) goalie jersey had elbow pads sewn in -- part of what made it cool. I remember more generally that things sewn into linings were very neat, as though two dimensions had come apart and left a place between them for secreting things not quite belonging to this world where everything was either inside or outside.

posted by William 5:15 PM
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I remember purple loosestrife everywhere, filling the marshland and waterways on either side of the commuter rail tracks from Sharon to Boston. I remember commuting with my mother in the summer to a job at Coolidge House. I remember going to Pier 1 to check out the beautiful fabrics on the dresses there (the cuts were always appealing looking but plain old ugly on) during my lunch break, and sometimes getting frozen yogurt with my mom on the way home.

posted by Rosasharn 10:31 AM
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Sunday, September 12, 2010

I remember that it would sometimes feel strange -- especially when code-switching -- to not be able to use honorifics in English.

posted by sravana 7:33 AM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, September 11, 2010

I remember in seventh grade English the high-spirited Peter Rogers talking to our teacher about the Neapolitan flick of the fingers outwards from under the chin. Our teacher was mock-scandalized at Peter; we were puzzled and interested, so Mr. Donahue (or was it Mr. Baruch?) explained that the gesture ("never do it in Naples if you value your life!") meant "Nuts to you!" I'd never heard that phrase before either. But it really didn't seem so bad. And it was interesting to learn two new insults simultaneously, each somehow explaining the other.

posted by William 10:00 AM
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Monday, September 06, 2010

I remember the fact that the Mets performed a triple play, and also I remember putting together how the unassisted triple play Hugh told me of (a different ohadn't an unspecified team) had to have occurred.

posted by William 1:04 PM
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