I remember

About my book

Photo by Jacob Ehnmark

Dear readers, yesterday I wrote about paid subscriptions and the free PDFs I’m going to give away.

Whatever plan you choose, one of the books you are going to get is Made of This, a book I wrote a few years ago with Randy Osborne. Today I’d like to write about the book’s interesting history and how it was made.

If you have read my interview with David Tighe, you know I’m interested in zines. Not only I’m an avid zine reader, I made my own zines between 2000 and 2010.

Zine makers like to trade with other creators. That’s how I got to know Randy. We quickly developed a long-distance friendship - first letters, then the email.

During these exchanges we discovered that we both liked books called I Remember (for Randy, it was a work by Joe Brainard; in my case, it was Georges Perec’s book) and more in general were fascinated by memories and diaries.

In one of his messages, Randy even included a poem by Thomas Hood.

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But now, I often wish the night

Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,

The roses, red and white,

The vi'lets, and the lily-cups,

Those flowers made of light!

The lilacs where the robin built,

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday,—

The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heav'n

Than when I was a boy.

Intrigued by this coincidence, I came up with the idea of writing a four-handed memoir of sorts, alternating our memories. I even came up with a couple of rules:

1. The memories can be as short as a one liner, and no longer than 4-5 lines.

2. Every memory must have something in common with the one preceding it. “For example, if I wrote ‘I remember the ice cream man,’ you may write something regarding ice cream, or a bar or other place where you used to buy ice cream, etc.”.

And so we started this back-and-forth exercise. After two and a half years, we decided to stop at memory No. 999. Here’s the book

And here’s how it begins:

1. I remember De Luca. He used to bully me every other day when I was 8, 9, 10…

2. I remember blue lips on the bully Kurt Johnson as he wheezed and writhed on the ground. My schoolbooks scattered around, the warm blood from my nose, the other boys standing big-eyed and quiet. “Punch through your target,” my uncle had told me, as he pointed to the karate chart’s kill sites: throat, solar plexus …

3. I remember Shinjuku Gyoen, its green green grass, and Isa’s red red lips, and the cherry blossoms, and my stupid questions one sunny April of sixteen light-years ago.

4. I remember Vickie Wight’s red winter coat with the fake fur trim, and how I could see her two blocks from the playground, walking to school like a movie star.

5. I remember an old man masturbating inside a roman-porno movie theater in Tokyo at 3 p.m.

6. I remember the Family Theater, and thousands of crickets lining the bottom of the doors, hopping over each other, seething like a river.

7. I remember my Japanese girlfriend wanted to leave me because my legs had got so severely sunburned on our river trip that the day after I could barely stand up. She said I was a nuisance and an embarrassment.

8. I remember floating down the Mekong on a barge. I read Buddhist texts and thought about how calm I could be if people would stop pissing me off.

9. I remember eating shojin cuisine at a Buddhist temple on Mount Takao, in a bare 6-tatami room, me and Marina, and wishing time somehow stopped.

10. I remember clumps of snow spattering us from the redwoods as we hiked that spring in upper Kings Canyon, with all Sarah owned and all I owned from Illinois crammed into the back of my Subaru. Hello, California.

And so on and on. I bet you have already figured out which memories are mine and which are Randy’s.

This is, by the way, an exercise you can try yourself. Choose a suitable partner and start sharing memories.

And don’t forget that until the end of September, you can become a Special Supporter for only $51.00 and get seven free book PDFs.

On Thursday, I’ll be back with my usual Japan-related posts.