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

Saturday, April 27, 2002

I remember the riding stables (I think they were called the Claremont Stables) on 89th street between Amsterdam and Columbus. I took some riding lessons there, circling the indoor arena, covered with sand and cinders and sawdust and straw. The better riders would ride on the bridal path in Central Park. I was always interested in the fact that they would have to follow the traffic rules. You could see them riding east towards the Park on 89th, or west on 88th, down to Amsterdam and back east to the stable. There they were, in jodpurs and round velvet covered black helmets, looking so out of sync with scuzzy New York -- the neighborhood, the cars, the traffic, the honking. What made the transition was the horse-manure: dirty like the streets, but related to the aristocratic riders. Once running around the reservoir, years later, I saw Margot and I think her sister Anne riding on the bridal path, and thought they must have hired horses at the stable. She didn't see me, and I in a kind of panic I hastened my steps away from her, by the cyclone fence around the glittering water.

posted by william 4:48 PM
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