I Remember: Margo Glantz
Thinking of Joe Brainard's "I remember" [whose model was followed by Georges Perec and so many others], we asked Mexican writer Margo Glantz to share with us some of her memories. This is what she sent us.
I remember when I was a girl: in the Mexico valley there were several lakes and the city really was transparent.
I remember walking through streets of Dallas in times of intense heat: I admired the elegance of the women as they were back then, with their great Great Garbo hats, their high heels and their cotton dresses, as if we were in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, inside the movie, and not watching it in the theater, sitting next to unknown yet romantic people.
I remember my father wore Tardan hats and a beard in the same style Trotski wore it.
I remember I only had one doll in my childhood.
I remember that when I arrived for the first time in Istanbul, the legendary Constantinople, I had the feeling of never having left Mexico City and incessantly going through streets identical to those of a popular neighborhood, la Lagunilla; the alleys suddenly opened up and became the Golden Horn, a huge perspective, a magnificent view, the sun just shinning over the sea and in between the hazy background of the sky, the silhouettes of endless minarets and domes of the mosques of the old city; the sight left me perplexed, in awe, and nonetheless in a sudden and playful shift of my consciousness I was already back in Paris, desperately crying because I’d no longer be seeing the Golden Horn, something which really happened to me as it happens in any trip, even though I was still contemplating it, fascinated, in ecstasy, in that precise instance, from a miraculous corner of the city.
I remember the first time I taught in the United States, in the Instituto de Lenguas extranjeras of Monterrey, California. In my spare time I used to take highway #1 to have a cheese sandwich and black olives in Nepenthe for lunch, a small and beautiful restaurant located at the top of a mountain which was very close to where Henry Miller had retired from the world’s ruckus along with one of his wives, I think the fifth one, a Japanese. I was driving up the road on a kaki green car that had belonged in better times to the Pacific Bell Company, in that time the most important phone company in the west, it was a huge piece of junk which struggled to make it up the narrow road through which other cars sped by.
I remember how I cried when I saw Gone with the Wind.
I remember Perec used to recall Cantinflas.
I remember I travel as it was my only destiny.
I remember that in late 1954 I arrived in Cologne with Paco López Cámara and we stayed at a family pension that cost five marks, had no heating, but did have a bed covered with one of those goose feather filled comforters –like the ones my parents transported in their trunks from Ukraine–, special for fighting the cold and having a good night, and the next morning timidly putting a hand out the window to gage the temperature; then, doing our best to dress up covered by the comforter, to then walk through the city all bundled up. From that trip I also remember the blackened Cathedral, with its broken stained glass windows and huge spaces in between the clouds that revealed an equally sinister sky, thanks to the winter and the traces left by the bombs.
I remember that when I studied in Paris there was one of those oil crisis that suddenly threatened the civilized world: this time it was a crisis in the Suez Canal, perhaps in 1956—; we continuously trembled from the cold in that period because the production of mazout gas, necessary to get the radiators going, was interrupted. I also remember a day in which I was reading the newspaper in front of a kiosk and found out about the Soviet invasion of Hungary. A lady produced a single, terrifying comment: “Zut, plus de beurre!.”
I remember that when I was fifteen I successively read The Wild Palms by Faulkner (translated by Borges or his mother), Crime and punishment by Dostoiewski, and Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I haven’t been able to read again any of those books, I can’t stand their unhappy ending.
I remember the year is coming to an end.
I remember when it was still possible to walk outside late in the night in my city.
I remember the 1985 earthquake in Mexico. I went through a street filled with rubble: a sign prohibited throwing pebbles.
Other entries:
Sergio Chejfec
I remember when I was a girl: in the Mexico valley there were several lakes and the city really was transparent.
I remember walking through streets of Dallas in times of intense heat: I admired the elegance of the women as they were back then, with their great Great Garbo hats, their high heels and their cotton dresses, as if we were in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, inside the movie, and not watching it in the theater, sitting next to unknown yet romantic people.
I remember my father wore Tardan hats and a beard in the same style Trotski wore it.
I remember I only had one doll in my childhood.
I remember that when I arrived for the first time in Istanbul, the legendary Constantinople, I had the feeling of never having left Mexico City and incessantly going through streets identical to those of a popular neighborhood, la Lagunilla; the alleys suddenly opened up and became the Golden Horn, a huge perspective, a magnificent view, the sun just shinning over the sea and in between the hazy background of the sky, the silhouettes of endless minarets and domes of the mosques of the old city; the sight left me perplexed, in awe, and nonetheless in a sudden and playful shift of my consciousness I was already back in Paris, desperately crying because I’d no longer be seeing the Golden Horn, something which really happened to me as it happens in any trip, even though I was still contemplating it, fascinated, in ecstasy, in that precise instance, from a miraculous corner of the city.
I remember the first time I taught in the United States, in the Instituto de Lenguas extranjeras of Monterrey, California. In my spare time I used to take highway #1 to have a cheese sandwich and black olives in Nepenthe for lunch, a small and beautiful restaurant located at the top of a mountain which was very close to where Henry Miller had retired from the world’s ruckus along with one of his wives, I think the fifth one, a Japanese. I was driving up the road on a kaki green car that had belonged in better times to the Pacific Bell Company, in that time the most important phone company in the west, it was a huge piece of junk which struggled to make it up the narrow road through which other cars sped by.
I remember how I cried when I saw Gone with the Wind.
I remember Perec used to recall Cantinflas.
I remember I travel as it was my only destiny.
I remember that in late 1954 I arrived in Cologne with Paco López Cámara and we stayed at a family pension that cost five marks, had no heating, but did have a bed covered with one of those goose feather filled comforters –like the ones my parents transported in their trunks from Ukraine–, special for fighting the cold and having a good night, and the next morning timidly putting a hand out the window to gage the temperature; then, doing our best to dress up covered by the comforter, to then walk through the city all bundled up. From that trip I also remember the blackened Cathedral, with its broken stained glass windows and huge spaces in between the clouds that revealed an equally sinister sky, thanks to the winter and the traces left by the bombs.
I remember that when I studied in Paris there was one of those oil crisis that suddenly threatened the civilized world: this time it was a crisis in the Suez Canal, perhaps in 1956—; we continuously trembled from the cold in that period because the production of mazout gas, necessary to get the radiators going, was interrupted. I also remember a day in which I was reading the newspaper in front of a kiosk and found out about the Soviet invasion of Hungary. A lady produced a single, terrifying comment: “Zut, plus de beurre!.”
I remember that when I was fifteen I successively read The Wild Palms by Faulkner (translated by Borges or his mother), Crime and punishment by Dostoiewski, and Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I haven’t been able to read again any of those books, I can’t stand their unhappy ending.
I remember the year is coming to an end.
I remember when it was still possible to walk outside late in the night in my city.
I remember the 1985 earthquake in Mexico. I went through a street filled with rubble: a sign prohibited throwing pebbles.
Other entries:
Sergio Chejfec
