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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.
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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
Sunday, December 25, 2011
I remember we never had Christmas, though our next door neighbors did, and I was a litte jealous. One year they came home with a white synthetic tree, which my father disapproved of. I remember that since he was my father I accepted his expertise about a holiday he didn't celebrate.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
I remember walking up Dartmouth Street, from the T, past the BPL, alongside the mall. What I remember is that it was a beautiful day, piercingly beautiful, and I was alone, probably walking to the train at Back Bay. My heart felt sharply full, and I remember deciding that I would remember that moment.
I remember riding the tricycle in the basement and discovering the three-point-turn.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
I remember seeing Free To Be You and Me and The Jungle Book with Chris and Nina. It's possible this was a double feature, but it's also possible they were separate occasions.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
I remember Luke around age five. We were upstairs in the bedroom he shared with Liana, his older sister, and he was putting on his pajamas. Since we were age-mates, across-the-street neighbors, and hippie children; since we each had a sibling of the opposite sex; and, most importantly, since we considered ourselves married, it was ok for him to be naked. Liana had put me in the room, but I did not feel ashamed—I felt proprietary. Luke wasn't looking for me to be there, and his back was to me as he changed clothes. Reflected in his armoire mirror I could see his tan chest, which I knew well—he often ran around shirtless in our street.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
I remember feeling bored. It's such true wisdom that one never feels bored anymore.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
I remember that I was in the New Yorker bookstore the morning before the first Frazier-Ali fight. I was so glad that Ali was able to fight again, after his principled refusal to go to Vietnam and the grief he took for it. I loved Ali. And I was sure that Frazier, a humorless tank, would beat him. In the bookstore that morning, where people were getting their copy of the Daily News, with a banner headline about the fight that night, I heard two crusty old people talking: one said, "Who do you think will win?" and the other, holding a paper cup of coffee, said, "I want Frazier but I'm afraid Ali will beat him." I couldn't believe that anyone real, anyone I was in the personal presence of, could be rooting for Frazier. I recognized the white right silent majority in this guy, and lost some Confucian respect for my elders. But I was also happy that my own pessimism about Ali's winning wasn't shared: this guy was pessimistic about Frazier. Still, I wasn't surprised when Frazier won, but it did seem unfair to me that Ali missed all that time as world champion.
Later, when he beat Frazier twice it didn't quite make up for the ignominious loss, though I was happy. And later still, I remember a photo of Frazier with a lot of bling leading a funk band he'd put together after retirement. I liked that about him, but still loved Ali more.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
I remember going to the racetrack early in the mornings with my father, to watch the training. My father had no particular connection with horses or gambling. I wasn't that interested in horses myself (not yet).
It impressed me that my father knew this was a thing one could do, and that he knew we could eat breakfast in the commissary with the trainers and jockeys. (Though maybe jockeys rode only during races; I wouldn't have been able to pick them out by their size, since they were all grown-ups.) The breakfast was much more interesting to me than the racetrack. People knew each other, and they knew that they did not know us, and my father had known that they wouldn't mind.
We may have done this only once. It seemed like something we had always done and always would do.
Friday, October 28, 2011
I remember Twiggy. Some friends -- Marc Bilgray or maybe Michael Hoban or Peter Rogers -- mentioned her, mentioned the name. They were knowing. I didn't know what manner of thing Twiggy was; I think my first approximation was (naturally) a tree: some famous or symbolic tree or tree toy or something. But soon she was just Twiggy. I think I might have seen a photo of her and come to realize that.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
I remember TV images of people with their heads hung low in green fields, or standing in front of pickup trucks, or next to silos, or in ditches, and I remember a sick, despairing feeling every time I heard the words, "Another family farm" on the nightly news.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
I remember shutting down in ninth grade. After February vacation, I stopped going to school. Well, almost: I went in on Thursdays, most weeks. Things at school had become terrible, but they did not get better when I stopped showing up. No one from the school called, that I know of. I stayed in bed, or in my room, not well enough to face my class, not sick enough to need any attention.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
I remember that the girls in the grade ahead played an elaborate pretend game during every recess, every single day. It was the perfect game--a story that went on and on, where each person played her role perfectly, with autonomy, yet adhering to the generally agreed-upon outline of "what happened." I watched them every single day, apart, silent. It looked so fun. I was so shy, though, that even when they invited me to join, which eventually one of the nice ones (Emily, was that you? Or you, Ayelet?) did, I could not bring myself to accept my heart's desire.
Monday, September 26, 2011
I remember that my great grandmother, Babette, always had sucking candies in a special bowl in her sitting room.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
I remember doing yard work. I hated it. I hated raking--or maybe I remember raking most, since there was so much raking to do. I remember the boiling screaming fury I felt at my parents for making me, and how my rage would drive me at the work. And I remember how, even worse, once I'd finished the section or the task, despite my determination to stay angry, I did feel proud.
Friday, September 23, 2011
I remember "pucker power." The line repeated several times, and ending on a lower note than it started -- a little sourly, like what it was describing. It was I think a sour candy or gum, something to freshen your breath: "hour after hour: Pucker Power!" I remember the puckered mouths of the actors on the commercials.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
I remember what everyone remembers: how blue the sky was on September 11. I remember what everyone remembers: a screen that showed a plane hitting a tower, a screen showing a tower falling. I remember what everyone remembers: two kinds of bewildered confusion—one from before we understood that the plane hit on purpose, and another after. I remember what everyone remembers: the sense that this had happened to me and that this grief belonged to each and all of us, and that everything was now different. But I also remember distrusting that last feeling—how could this be true, any more than it is always true—especially if we had to discuss at length whether to cancel Shakespeare class that afternoon. I remember feeling hinge-less and very afraid, and I remember that the movements of my fetus, my daughter-to-be, soothed and rocked me to sleep.
I remember Windows on the World, and the speed of the express elevators up there, how you had to swallow to keep your ears from popping, and how lovely the view was at night.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
I remember when the big noisy "push-button-to-cross" boxes appeared on traffic light polea. They were very slow and noisy, and made me miss the slim elegance they displaced from the fluted lovely vertical columns. They seemed confused, like big dumb friendly animals. They'd pause to consider what you'd wanted (to cross!) for it seemed like forever, clicking and clucking. Then finally, as though shaking off some last vestige of a deep ursine nap, they'd make a sound like a metal cube turning over, and the light would change.
Friday, August 26, 2011
I remember posting this entry about "the hurricane" (Donna, I believe) over nine years ago:
I remember the hurricane that came through New York when I was about six. My parents had been married the day before the hurricane of 1954, which was, I am told, a doozy, and my mother worried about hurricanes when they came through New York. She told me all about them -- this was the first time I'd heard the word -- and I stayed home waiting for it to come. I remember how dark it was, and looking out of my window onto 90th street (this is when we lived on the 2nd floor, in apartment 2-G) when it came through. I saw only one man on the street (though I was surprised to see any, because she'd warned me that people could be blown away), struggling East against the wind, holding his hat tight on to his head. It was clear that this weather was a serious anomaly, and yet somehow not as serious as I'd thought it was going to be. As with the total eclipse a while later (see earlier entry) it turned out that this major experience of the dangerously exoctic was less major than I'd been led to believe. I remember these things more because of my anticipation of them than because of the actual experience. But the actual experience was, in retrospect, quite important too: it somehow confirmed a sense of safety even in an interesting world. My room was my room, even as I wondered where that man had to go in that weather; my father was my father, even as I looked up into the blinding eclipse, which wasn't so blinding after all. The things that mattered stayed the same: at least that's what I felt (without having to think it) then.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
I remember sitting on the front steps, waiting, waiting, waiting, and finally he would come, scoop me up in his arms, and ask me if he thought he'd be allowed to come home again. I remember him smelling like Old Spice, Budweiser, Camels, and shoe polish. When I see a homeless person drinking Budweiser or smoking Camels, I remember the extra dollar in my purse.
Friday, August 19, 2011
I remember how good my grandmother was at saving burnt toast. She'd scrape it with skill and patience, and it was good as new! This was my downtown grandmother, but she always did this at our house, since that was where I would use the toaster and burn the toast.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
I remember Tisha b'Av: I remember sitting on the floor of the Dunbar Street building, leaning on my mother, listening to Eikha, words lit by candles wrapped in tin foil. I remember sitting on the ground in front of the Kotel on the trip my brother and I took alone. I was 14. I remember sitting there into the evening, and as darkness fell I finally felt the full front of loss and grief, and wept, and a tanned old woman in a dress like a housecoat came over and told me to get up, get up, there was a time to cry, but now it was time to break the fast.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
I remember that matchboxes were the perfect sized containers for little handmade books.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
I remember how cool 35 millimeter film canisters were: first the metal ones, later the plastic. Good for pot, sure, but really it worked the other way: pot smokers were cool because so many of them were photographers, and had all these film canisters at hand.
Monday, July 11, 2011
I remember that the shapes of Africa and South America fitting together led to the hypotheses about continental drift. I liked how a scientific theory could take its start from a simple, almost childlike observation like that.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
I remember the Sports Illustrated cover that showed a smiling Willie Mays, about to drop his full-swing bat behind his back, and the words "Say Hey, 3000 Hits."
Thursday, July 07, 2011
I remember my father trying to open a cellophane package that I'd failed at opening, using his teeth to try to rip it in the same frustrating, frustrated way we did.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
I remember understanding the chirp of cicadas as a mechanical sound.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
I remember that after my nap on long summer Shabbat afternoons, my father would give me a cold roast-beef sandwich for my supper. And I remember sleeping on the back porch on Locke Street, on that grimy green vinyl-covered settee. Waking sweaty and stuck to the surface of those cushions was good.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
I remember my grandparents teaching us to play cards. We played Black-Jack (21), Poker (five- and seven-card stud, mostly), and we played Bridge. I remember my grandfather trying to teach me to think about my hand: Not just how to hold my cards or count my points, but how to think about what contract I ought to be in, and what was out against me. "Count your losers," he would say, "count your losers"—but I would get so caught up in what I imagined doing with the cards I had been dealt, my enthusiasm would cloud my sight.
Friday, May 06, 2011
I remember my mother forcing hyacinths: bulbs set in colorful jars for weeks and weeks on the steps under the bulkhead, where it was cold and dark. I remember the sweetly wafting, dreamy scent of wisteria at night in the streets of Baka.
I remember smells, but how can I say more than that? When presented with them, I remember the smell of leaves decaying and the smell of lilac and gardenia, of rubber erasers, of bike-chain oil, of copy machines and hot paper, of wet dog, of roses and of soil, the smell of a gerbill's cage, of clean wood shavings, of acquarium water, chlorine, pepper, lemon verbena (and other herbs/spices but the point is not to say how many), of diapers (infant and toddler) and of chicks that need their newspaper changed. I remember a lot of other outside smells I don't know the names of but that I walk into like a wall of past. I notice that this year, as every year, the viburnum spreads its scent over the whole garden, so that I have come to associate that flavor with the smelless muscarii, even though they contribute nothing to it--they just show up around the same time.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
I remember lying in the back seat of the car and looking up at trees' waving canopies and the sky. I remember the glory of a night city from afar, perfect tiny lights defining streets and buildings. I remember the urgent race of the evening highway: red lights vs. white. I never could tell who was winning.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
I remember that my uptown grandmother used Roman numerals for the month when she dated letters and checks: 26 IV '11, e.g. I remember learning that you're not supposed to draw parallel lines linking Roman numerals together, at top and at bottom, though that's how my mother taught me to do them, and how my grandmother did them.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
I remember the gluey, wood-shaved smell of Frameworks. I remember the little pieces of glue-paper in paper cups, and the spray bottles, and the low piles of paper towels on the cardboard-covered tables. (My father didn't like those paper towels; he only used newspaper to clean his glass.) I remember picking staples and tacks out of the carpet, though I was told repeatedly not to play with sharp things. I remember the colorful magnetic corners on the wall, and the amazing array of mats: so many colors, but my father never chose anything bright. He built somber (hindsight says tasteful) wooden frames, sometimes gold or silver, and I remember him measuring and remeasuring, and putting in his orders at the counter at the back of the store (which one? they're all conflated). He was an expert frame-builder--he never had to ask for help. He was friends with the people who worked there, especially with Barbara, who had a horse and a house she shared with her sister. I remember how bleak and grey Mass Ave always seemed, and the sticker (stationery?) store that was only a few doors down from--the second location? When we were bigger, we were allowed to go there on our own and buy stickers with our own money.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
I remember envying kids who could swing easily across monkey bars. I could manage it (effortfully) in kindergarten, but got progressively worse as I grew older, so by the time I was about ten years old, I'd give up after one or two bars. I remember that because a boy around my age in the Bowring Club playground challenged me to an obstacle course race that included swinging across the monkey bars that connected one slide to another. I was extremely embarrassed when I couldn't even complete the race.
I remember my father helping me do pull-ups on the same monkey bars. While I was trying (and not doing very well), a lady came up to me and said I shouldn't do it because it would develop my biceps, which would be unattractive on a girl. I think this motivated me to try harder.
I remember accompanying my brother to the playground whenever my family went to Bowring Club, well after I outgrew the slides and swings. I secretly enjoyed playing on them, although I pretended I was only there to watch over my brother.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
I remember my uptown grandmother telling me to shake the sand out of my shoes when we'd been to the sandbox. I didn't know I had sand in my shoes! She did though, and I saw that she was right as she tilted my shoes over the toilet. The whole thing was really neat.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
I remember the wooden cuckoo clock that someone (who?) got us from Switzerland. Switzerland! My brother and I were in love with it, and it was put in our room. But it got annoying quickly, not just the frequent sounds, but because it had to be wound up every 12 hours, and the pendulum had a tendency to get stuck. Then, we had to adjust the time, and the cuckoo would pop out every time it hit the hour as we were turning the hands.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
I remember the little kid who lived in the apartment above us charging around his house for what seemed hours at a time, making the light fixture in the hallway rattle annoyingly every time he crossed over it.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
I remember my friend R's older brother, D. I stayed at R's house many times for Shabbat. D was sly: he caught me out watermeloning the words to the Bentsching (Grace after Meals); he made the most of R's moods (she probably got sick of me sometimes) and would invite me to play Sorry or Chutes and Ladders in his room when she got tetchy; and he was the only boy I can remember who propositioned me with the traditional "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" (I didn't). I liked him fine, most when we hung out with his friends. Their jokes flew so quickly, and they teased without meanness. I remember wishing I had an older brother.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
I remember my mother's shoes. Tons and tons of them in her closet. I somehow recognized them as pairing the way my own shoes did. I think maybe that's a huge developmental moment, the moment when you recognize that shoes come in pairs. (I remember learning that socks could go on either foot. This after the hard lesson that shoes had to go on the right foot!) Women's shoes also paired up, despite their exoticism. I liked that, somehow.
Monday, March 28, 2011
I remember learning to type: asdfg hjkl; In bed for much of 1985, recovering from one laser surgery after another, I sat with a tray and an old manual typewriter on my lap and practiced drills off a library book. asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; The dry cramped experience I hated most bitterly: meaningless repetition of meaningless marks--no plot, no character, no rise or fall beyond my clumsy, disobedient fingers. No one forced me. That book was my own hateful choice, trapped for all those loathsome blank weeks, asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl;
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
I remember the first time I saw a photo of Elizabeth Taylor, in Life Magazine, and how struck I was by how much like my mother she looked. She was forty, I think? They both were. (I once mentioned their resemblance by-the-bye, eight years ago.) I still don't know whether I thought she was beautiful because she looked like my mother, or whether I thought my mother was beautiful because she was styled like Elizabeth Taylor.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
I remember from the biography of Houdini that I read in fifth grade that he could stay under ice-covered water for an hour or so by pressing his nose against the rough bottom surface of the ice and breathing the air trapped there.
Monday, March 14, 2011
I remember the menacing words "Three Mile Island."
Saturday, March 05, 2011
I remember watching the Camp David Accords with my father on TV. It must have been Indian summer, because I remember that it was hot in our house, and my father was wearing his undershirt with no shirt over. Still, the men were outside, wearing suits.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
I remember rubber pants. They were itchy and uncomfortable, and poorly fitted, and often leaky.
Monday, February 21, 2011
I remember the clean cut wigs I read about in Time Magazine, worn by hippies in court. I remember being impresses by one photo of a guy who seemed to have notably short hair, but who in fact had very long hair.
I remember "Yes, I remember Adlestrop", and thinking of the poem on train journeys when we stopped at empty, rural stations. I think I read it in a poetry craft book, where the exercise was creative translation or rewriting or something. I misremembered it as being by Ted Hughes, until I saw it again today.
And now it makes me think of the British Library, because so much of the poetry I read was from there, and was like that, all meadowsweet and haycocks and Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Yet, it never felt too foreign, because I grew up with books that were very English from the time I started reading, and all those words were still a familiar (and beloved, because reading was beloved) part of my experience of the world, even if the objects they referred to were not.
Monday, February 14, 2011
I remember that money and paper/books are both sacred (and somehow related, Lakshmi & Saraswati). I remember that when I was around five or six, I tore a ten rupee note while trying to stuff it into a piggy bank. This upset me terribly, not for the monetary loss (I had broken toys of greater value before), but because I thought it was sacrilege, worthy of divine punishment. I went into the prayer room and begged forgiveness. I think I glued together the note with cellophane tape, and didn't tell anyone -- not that anybody noticed. A few years later, I was made to stand on a piece of cardboard in school for some logistical reason. This was almost as bad -- I think I prayed all the time I was standing -- but I felt a little less culpable, perhaps because I was older, and because someone else made me do it.
(I'm pretty sure tearing a currency note wouldn't at all affect me spiritually now, but I'd still feel very uncomfortable about standing on paper for an extended time.)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
I remember my counselor Julie changing the lyrics to "Ah-ban-ee-bee-oh-boh-eh-beh," which was one of the first songs we learned the steps to in Israeli dance. She sang, "I want to be a polar bear: I want to be a polar bear when I grow up"--and then she would add, under her breath, "As long as Greg is." I loved her sass and her uncool (to us) music (CSNY), her big-hippie style and the fact that she was in love with Greg. I stayed up late to confide in her. She left camp halfway through the summer, sent home for smoking pot.
I remember not understanding what tether ball was. I saw an ad for a tether ball kit on a cereal box, and I just had no idea what it was. Every other ball game I knew could be parsed from its elements: baseball, football, handball, basketball. But what was a tether? The word was completely opaque to me. I still have that atavistic reaction when I hear about astronauts tethered to their spacecraft.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
I remember my mother saying it was fine to leave our money on the table with the bill when we ate at a Chinese restaurant once. I assumed everyone was always suspicious of each other, and so of us, and most of me. In stores I tried not to look like the shoplifter I was sure they suspected me of being. But my parents didn't seem sensitive to others' suspicions, an insensitivity I was mildly embarrassed about. I always made sure to tell the ticket-taker at the movies that my father had all our tickets, as though this was a foible of his. They never seemed surprised, though. They'd dealt with other fathers, it was clear.
Friday, February 11, 2011
I remember the photo restoration shop on the East side of Broadway that I would always pass on my way home from the Hotel Bretton Hall. They showed before and after sepia photos, with amazing results. But what I remember about it most was the card in the window, assuring immigrants with tattered photos (I now realize) that: WIR SPRECHEN DEUTSCH / SE HABLA ESPAÑOL and then the same in Cyrillic. I somehow knew that "se" could not mean "we" and I was distressed by the fact that there wasn't a one-to-one correspondence between the assurances on this cardboard Rosetta Stone. I so wanted the Cyrillic, which my grandparents and mother could read, to just fall into place, word for word. But if didn't.
I remember finding a teach-yourself-Russian book at about the same time at our house, when I was eight or nine, and racking my brains over trying to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, but failing. The book was a black hardcover, printed on cheap paper. The lists of letters were set down in columns. But the book didn't give you any exercises, and somehow it was impossible to test yourself. And the photography shop might be able to restore what was lost, but it couldn't give me the Cyrillic I never had.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
I remember that ski lift tickets on your parka jacket, especially after long winter weekends or vacations, were a badge of cool.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
I remember babysitting for Yitzi and Ashi. I remember when Ashi was a late toddler: how I loved to hear him speak, to name objects for him and get him to repeat the words. I remember pointing to things in their fridge: Broccoli. Orange Juice. Tabasco Sauce. What did he want? Cheerios.
Monday, January 24, 2011
I remember being fascinated by physical constants -- that you could attach a number to an object or process, and that the number was essentially unchanging in space and time. Where in the universe did these numbers come from? Even more wonderful were constants that were limits, like the speed of light or absolute zero. It was strange enough that things like light and temperature were bounded, but that we could also put a number on those bounds seemed crazy.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
I remember my father trying to scare me out of the hiccups with sudden fake-punches. Probably the only time he didn't scare me.
I remember always finding my pajamas under my pillow (then later folding them and putting them there myself). It was so comforting to find them there, waiting.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
I remember the phone system at Columbia. I remember knowing how to do amazing feats of voicemail acrobatics from anywhere on campus. I remember recording myself singing The Obvious Child and sending it to my friends' mailboxes during finals sophomore year. "And in remembering a road sign / I am remembering a girl when I was young / And we said, these songs are true, these days are ours, these tears are free / The cross is in the ball park—the cross is in the ball park." I must have re-recorded it six times, and now that I think think about it, I wonder if I chickened out or finally sent one. I hope I did.
Monday, January 17, 2011
I remember that my father would never read the sentiments inside a sentimental birthday card (your standard Hallmark card with its short italic poem). He went straight to whatever was written in ink. This was an interesting lesson to me about what counted (the real, the personal) and what didn't.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
I remember hating school. I remember the loathsome boringness of it, the long hours of tedious repetition. Aching hand writing the same Hebrew letters over and over again. Exercise after language arts exercise in the Red Book, the Blue Book, the Green book. The same mouth-twisting prayers every morning. One math problem after the next, ad infinitum.
Friday, January 07, 2011
I remember that adults wrote with pens. When they made mistakes, they crossed them out, instead of erasing them. I remember that this seemed a mystery to me, like script. I couldn't read script and I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to read something that had illegible crossed out parts in it. It somehow didn't occur to me that you just skipped them. So the technique of crossing out seemed an amazing adult attainment (like script). I could barely imagine how interesting what was said in this esoteric writing must be.
Monday, January 03, 2011
I remember going to visit Floyd and Lynn and Jesse and Sarah every February vacation. Another way to say this: I remember going to the Smithsonian Museums. I remember the Air & Space Museum. Because it was the place my brother felt most at home and happy, we went there often. But I also remember the zoo and the natural history museum and and the botanical gardens (though they are not Smithsonian) and hours on the Mall and art, art, art. I remember when Jesse and Yossi and I were old enough to be able to visit galleries on our own: We synchronized our watches with my parents, agreed on a meeting place, and set a time to return to it. I remember going to what must have been the Hirshhorn: We walked around and talked about the works by ourselves. I don't remember anything we saw that day except a large, grey Henry Moore that I liked, but I remember the satisfaction of recognizing the artwork, the conviction that the works were my particular friends, just as Jesse was, even if we saw each other only once a year. Walking those galleries released me from being poor, being uncool, being 13, being awkward, and deep, and ugly. Artwork does not love you less for any of these reasons, and neither did Jesse.
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