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, June 25, 2002

I remember having been stung by a bee. I don't remember the sting, but I remember that it was just over my right eye, I think within its orbit, and I had to wear a huge bandage and the swelling closed up my eye. I hated having the bandage changed because it was so painful, though all I remember is hating to have it changed, not (in the slightest) the pain. That was in Stormville.

I remember also in Stormville my father trying to pull one of my teeth by tying a string from it to the door, which he then slammed. But I couldn't hold back, so that didn't work. I remember also when they would sterilize needles at the stove to get splinters out.

I remember tubular gauze bandages (condom-shaped) formed to fit over your fingers. Or maybe it was just the photo on the box showed them on someone's fingers. They seemed very creepy somehow, as though fingers were just a place waiting to be injured. The photo on the box showed someone with several bandaged fingers -- like three of them -- holding up his hand. The obvious Freudian reason for its creepiness is certainly a part of it, as with my grandfather's joke about pulling off my nose (and the story of the wolf ice-fishing with his tail). I associate these bandages with my missing-fingered schoolmate, although I think I was disturbed by the bandages before I ever met him.

posted by william 7:22 AM
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