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

Friday, March 15, 2002

I remember test patterns and then The Modern Farmer and Sunrise Semester, and then finally something interesting to watch, while the adults slept.

I remember kids riding on the rear bumper of the busses, up Broadway or Amsterdam. They'd hang on by the very tips of their fingers to the tiny purchase between the rear window and the shell of the bus. Sometimes the bus driver would get out and chase them away. They'd scatter and then get back on the bumper before the bus pulled away. The newer busses didn't have bumpers you could ride on. I once saw someone do this on the subway -- ride outside the last car.

I remember throwing snowballs at cars on Amsterdam. One car stopped and a guy got out and chased us. Scary.

posted by william 9:22 AM
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