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New York was a very different city when I moved here, twenty-four years ago. Even so, when I try to remember what it was really like, back then, the image I have in my mind, however tactile its details, is at this point nearly non-empirical, and wholly self-created
All of us hold in our minds our very own site-specific New York, as each of us holds and will forever hold in our minds our very own Jenna. In absence, begins memory. When I moved to New York Jenna was, roughly, a year and a half old. If I try now to conceive of what she was really like, back then, the image that comes to mind is of a generic baby, applicable to a multitude of memories, to any situation, any family. Perhaps one afternoon I might have seen her, cradled in her mother's arms, but I'll never know. And, now, try as I might, I can suppose but not truly imagine who Jenna might have become by the time she turned thirty, or thirty-five, or forty. No. Twenty-five she was, twenty-five she'll always be. In New York, it's impossible to recall things you've done in the past with friends or family without knowing that nine times out of ten, the places where you did them exist now only in the minds of those who were there. I first saw Jenna in the grand ballrooms of the St. Moritz, the rooms with the mirrors and the gilded walls and the chandeliers and the windy terraces with the view of the park. (Rooms now, like Jenna, transfigured.) Although she seemed to me then as if she could have been twenty-five, she was in fact sixteen or seventeen. It was at the SFWA party, in November of either 1992 or 1993. The former, I think, but in my memory the years flow like old glass. Ellen was there, and Rob, and Scraps; Patrick and Teresa, and Ellie, and Gordon, and Robert, and many more. Among the usual suspects, hers was a very fresh face. I don't remember the first things I said to her. Hi. Good to meet you. See you next time. Something like that, anyway. The last time I saw Jenna was at my apartment, on Holiday Video Night, on the second Saturday of December, 2000. She wore a wide-brimmed cerise hat she bought in Chelsea that all the women envied. She brought us our wedding present, a painting on tin, done in Mexico, inscribed with a prayer: San Pascual, I am so grateful to you for helping me when I needed you most the day the government men arrived without notice and I didn't even have the ingredients to make a little mole but I asked for your help and everything worked out just fine and they even congratulated me. Domitila Crecenso, Pachuca, 1921.Valeria showed her where we were going to hang the painting she gave us, next to one by Judith Clute. I showed her my autographed Charles Fort, and a Victorian trade card that employed the image of a frog to sell cologne. I'm sure at some point in the evening I made comments to the effect that thank God they'd finally gotten all those dopey cows off the street. I'm also fairly sure we gossiped, at some point, about something silly somebody had done somewhere. That evening, among other visual treats, I presented a contribution Carrie brought, an "All-Barkie" short subject, circa 1930: a love triangle, a murder in a night club, a trial by jury, starring a cast of dogs stuffed into clothes, ears and paws tugged hither and thither by, seemingly, piano wire, and as badly dubbed as a Gamera movie - deeply disturbing, yet satisfyingly ridiculous. Jenna laughed as hard as I'd ever heard her laugh. I don't remember the last things I said to her, that night. Happy Holidays. See you next time. Take care. Bye, sweetie. Something like that. Borges spoke of how his father once remarked that he realized it was impossible to remember his childhood. He had, he said, come to understand that what he had always believed to be his memories of events, or scenes, or people, were in fact memories only of the last time he had had the memory. That each time the shade of the memory came to mind, its underlying actuality receded ever further into the irretrievable past. Today we might use the metaphor of a videotape, duped infinite times, over endless generations, until only the blurriest outline remained of a crystalline vision. I remember Borges' father when I remember my own memories of Jenna. While we cannot trust memory to rescue what we have lost, memory -- smoothed and perfected by the passage of years -- can still support us in those times when we may find solace solely by falling upon its mercies. But it seems to me far more important that hereout, all of us should try to enjoy every moment of the present with which we are blessed before it inevitably, instantly, transforms into nothing more than the most immediate memory of a past spinning ever inward. Every moment, no matter how forgettable, how infuriating, how ludicrous, how heartbreaking, how joyous. Bill Gibson reminded me, during the week Jenna was passing from this country to the next, that "if we should we be so fortunate as to enjoy long lives, it would also mean that we will go to a fair number of funerals." So let us be as fortunate as we can be, and enjoy our lives and the lives of those we love, however long, while we live them.
L'chaim.
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