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, May 13, 2002
I remember Hi-Life or was it Hi Lite?which some kids subscribed to in my class, and which I would sometimes see at the dentist's office. I remember it had pointless cartoons with a bear and a penguin and I think a little kid. I think it made possible some resonance -- perhaps irrelevant -- with Bishop's poem "In the Waiting Room."


posted by william 8:44 PM
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