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 14, 2002

I remember that the Wicked Witch of the West later became Madge, the Palmolive dishwashing liquid mascot. In the commercials she gave manicures to women amazed by how soft her hands were. It was the Palmolive: "You're soaking in it." "Dishwashing liquid? Oh, Madge!" "Relax...." Palmolive softens hands as you do the dishes.

I remember "Us Tarrytown smokers would rather fight than switch." And "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." And "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should," which was altered in the children's parody to "Winston tastes bad, like the one I just had; no filter, no taste, just a [toot toot] forty cent waste!" But they did have filters.

I remember the first cigarette I tried, in Italy. One puff and I was worried that I was hooked. And the first cigarette I finished, in Riverside Park, in some bushes, with Tommy Hoge. A Kent. Whenever I quit and then started up again, I'd get an intense evocation of that initial drag.

posted by william 12:36 AM
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