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, May 10, 2002

I remember Brach's candy. All the old ladies, including both my grandmothers, seemed to have a large blue tin of it, with a blue metal top, that later would be used for sewing supplies. I recall that there was a sort of dark pastel picture on the tin -- of flowers or trees or a garden, but also I seem to remember figures on it not unlike the very elongated women on the B. Altman's bags. I somehow thought that this candy belonged to the world of old ladies: I couldn't have imagined my mother buying it or finding it, since she didn't belong to that world.

posted by william 11:26 AM
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