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

Thursday, July 16, 2020

I remember taking an interest in figuring out who the shills were in the three-card-monte games in my neighborhood, usually when I was walking downtown on Broadway. I'd pass several different cardboard box kiosks. The shills would pick the wrong cards although we marks could see what the right card was, as was always confirmed.

After watching a bunch of games for a while I figured out that the three-card-monte teams had to be making less than minimum wage since it really took the four of them (dealer, two shills and lookout) an average of an hour or so to take some rube for $20. Usually the dealer and the lookout were people of color, but there would sometimes be a better-dressed white shill whom the tourist-rubes assumed had to be for real (partly because they couldn't imagine teamwork among this heterogeneous group; but I loved it).

I remember one shill in particular, maybe sixty (the dealer was probably twenty-five), wearing a coat and tie, but often unshaven. I got interested in the whole thing after I noticed him there every time I passed this particular game. He always looked like he was late for something, checking his watch because he really had to go, but always staying for one more deal. Occasionally he'd win, picking the card we would have picked, and the dealer would pay him off very graciously, reassuring the marks.

I remember that early on I was taken myself. I lost $5, the only money I had. The brilliant dealer (he was so good) wanted me to keep playing. He was theatrically skeptical when I said I had no more money. "I don't believe you, man. Show me your empty wallet and I'll give you your ten dollars." So I pulled out my wallet, triumphantly in front of all those witnesses. But I had a slip of paper and some receipt in it, and "That's not empty!" he said, affecting offense that I had lied to him. I grinned appreciatively, and he smiled back, and I went on my way.

posted by William 6:56 PM
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