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


Saturday, March 09, 2002
I remember that you have to keep the label up or back and not aim it at the ball, to avoid splitting the wood of the bat. I think I learned this originally from a Peanuts strip.

I remember wooden tennis rackets and presses.

I remember the first Wilson steel rackets with their prominent network of steel loops around the frame, through which the strings were threaded.

I remember gut vs. nylon, and that gut was better but would break in the rain.

I remember white tennis balls, and then the greenish-yellow balls that came in because they were more visible near dark. I also remember the vogue for fuschia balls. That's when I learned the word fuschia.


posted by william 12:11 AM
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