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

Friday, April 26, 2002

I remember that my uptown grandmother had a large Persian rug hanging from the wall in the dining room. I didn't quite see the point, though I didn't quite question it because it just seemed part of the character of the surroundings she'd focus. It was dark and somewhat dreary. It certainly didn't make the wall look any nicer. She also had camel bells on a belt hanging from a door-knob; I think there was something of a vogue for them, because I think my other grandparents had some too, and I got a set, maybe when someone returned from Yugoslavia with an extra set as a gift. I kind of liked them; they looked like copper but I think were made of some less reverberative metal. They're precursors to wind-chimes, but make hardly any sound.

posted by william 6:52 AM
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