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

Thursday, March 28, 2002

I remember that on manual typewriters you form an exclamation point with an apostrophe and a period.

I remember mechanical adding machines: you pulled a lever (like the lever that you pulled on the typewriter to go to the next line) after you entered each number. It would sometimes churn for seconds with machinary popping up and down to give you the result.

I remember couches covered in uncomfortable transparent plastic fabric protectors that would be removed only for the guests.

I remember that when I slept on the couch at my grandparents' (both sets), they would push chairs up to the side so that I wouldn't fall.

posted by william 7:03 AM
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