On May 29, Iris Cushing wrote the Pete’s Candy Store mailing list with news of dear friend and former student Cole Heinowitz’s drowning in the Yuba River, Northern California, on Saturday, May 25—Memorial Day Weekend. This page records a series of dates; I first learned of the terrible fact on Tuesday, May 27, just arrived in San Diego for several days work in the UCSD Archive. It is now Saturday, July 5, as I write this, six weeks to be precise from the initiating date. Thus I am making a memorial within the confines and limits of memory, as a memorial in itself. On June 6, Iris wrote again, inviting me and a number of writers close to Cole to read at a memorial event on June 13. I have found that memory works in a series (a nested stack) of distinct but mutually supporting frameworks. There could be no doubt about my wanting to participate and attend. First there is the durational spread that gives us the illusion of living in the present; then short-term memory, lasting through the day and likely as long as a weekend. My decision to attend and book a flight and lodging was made in that frame, and was implemented over the next few hours. As I move forward, through ever longer spans of duration, I reach the proximate limit of a time span of about three weeks. It was within this initial three-week time span that the memorial was scheduled and took place; it is now three weeks from that date. I am writing, then, before its temporal proximity shifts and the event, and all that it articulated, is further displaced. … More