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

Monday, April 01, 2002

I remember 15 cent subway tokens, and when they went up to 20 cents. They were very small, smaller than dimes, and had the Y of NYC punched out like a stencil. Later token changes changed the size each time, but when they went from fifteen to twenty cents they kept the same token and people hoarded them the weeks before the change.

I remember the penny shortage. Sam Goody's was giving 2 for one credit on merchandise for every penny you brought in. I managed to find a couple of hundred and bought a record effectively for half price (I don't remember what record though).

I remember that my Chelsea grandmother always rang the bell three times when she came to visit. My mother (like her mother) had a key, but always rang (once) when she got home. My father used his key to open the door -- there was a kind of gruff and paternal coughing and clicking of the door when he got home. I always knew who it was by these signs (although very occasionaly I was wrong).

posted by william 7:29 AM
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