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

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

From Jenn Lewin:

I remember crossing the George Washington Bridge with my grandparents when we'd drive from Boston to Lawrenceville and back again every summer from age 3 or 4 to 10 or so. I looked forwart to the trip itself because at that point it became a good excuse to see the New York City skyline, which I otherwise never got to see (not too many trips into New York, and I remember not paying attention to the skyline whenever we'd take NJ Transit into the city). I remember seeing the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, what feels like years later (maybe when I was 10), and thinking then of the GW as functional, designed to get across (and ideally to "make good time" on) and to see the world from, and picturing the Brooklyn Bridge as a monument, nicer to look at and to remember.

Jenn Lewin

posted by william 9:36 PM
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