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

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

I remember notes home from school. The teacher wrote a note on a canary slip of paper and put it in an envelope, and you had to get it signed by your parents. They were dreadful instances of forced confession. Once I threw the note out -- I remember seeing it at the bottom of the outside garbage pale, just before I replaced the bag of garbage over it. Everyday the teacher asked for the signed note, and every day I claimed to have forgotten it. I didn't know what would happen, but Easter vacation finally came, which was a big relief, and after vacation she forgot to ask me about it again.

posted by william 8:11 PM
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