"Fleeting
Memories," is a web
book by Park Slope poet Michael Ruby with
many
pictures
about
forgetting and
remembering
and
parenting
in
the
period
around
9/11.

It is featured
on
the
website
of
acclaimed
Brooklyn
publisher
Ugly
Duckling
Presse:
http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/

Here
is Michael Ruby from the introduction: "This is a collection of
memories that popped into my mind over a period of seven years at work,
as a copy editor at The Wall Street Journal, across the street from the
World Trade Center. As far as I can tell, the memories came from
nowhere, with no relation to the mostly political articles I was
editing about the Republican takeover of Congress, the government
shutdown, Monica Lewinsky, the Starr Report, the downfall of Newt
Gingrich, impeachment, Florida or Bush v. Gore. Many of the memories
are glimpses of places, a street corner and nothing more, as if a major
function of the mind were this continuous global positioning, this
continuous murmuring, ”Right now, I’m at the corner of 10th Ave. and
64th St.” The places are distributed fairly evenly over the course of
my life, with a somewhat disturbing precedence given to the streets
around my childhood home at 251 Montrose Ave. in South Orange, N.J."

There are more than two thousand memories here—listed and numbered. The book is a slide show with old photography and memorabelia. I like that each memory is expressed in one sentence. Ruby spent years writing down these one sentence recollections,  images, moments in time.

It’s very moving, very interesting, very addictive. I look for people and places I know. It evokes memories in me. They are random, unchronological, of large importance and small. Here are just a few:

228.  Stopping at a pizzeria with Louisa and the baby Charlotte in Staten Island in ’94
329.  The face of Journal editor Ron Smith anytime from ’86 until he died of AIDS in ’94
505.  The Kentile building in Brooklyn’s Gowanus on a dreary day during my New York walks
687.  Playing stickball with Carl Adamo on the blacktop at Marshall School in 7th grade