I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
--Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

Wednesday, March 13, 2002

I remember Palisades Amusement Park ("swings all day and after dark: Palisades from coast to coast, where a dime buys the most!" Why from coast to coast?) I went there once. It was fun enough. I was surprised later to discover that the word Palisades referred to the cliffs over the Hudson, not the park. My parents took us to the "Palisades Park" with a couple of other families, and I was all excited, and then it turned out that we were walking through the woods. The kids kind of got away, and we went splashing around in the Hudson by some rocks. When they found us they were appalled, and we were rushed home into the tub, and scrubbed for a very long time.

I remember bead belts -- I might have gotten one at Palisades Amusement Park, or maybe in the Poconos.

I remember riding on a roller-coaster with my (Chelsea) grandmother at Coney Island. I thought I knew roller-coasters since our friends the Herings (on whose property in Stormville we rented a little cottage: see yesterday) had a kind of track rollercoaster that you rode down from a ladder. It was fun but not scary. So we went to Coney Island, and I had no idea what to expect. Neither did she, I think. It was terrifying, and we both wanted it to be over. I remember seeing some other people screaming and laughing, their hair taken by the wind, ahead of us, when the ride started. But then once we got going, all I saw was the track. We didn't do it again.

posted by william 5:16 PM
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