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

Sunday, June 23, 2002

I remember Kitty Genovese. Though maybe I remember the first or second anniversary of her murder when some newspaper wrote a retrospective article on it. I remember picturing the scene, very much from the point of view of the people watching, never from her point of view. This may be because it didn't occur to me that she could have known that people were watching her and failing to call the police. When I pictured the scene, I imagined that I would call the police, but the story was so gripping that in my imagination I don't actually imagine myself pulling away from the scene: satisfied that I would do the right thing I just imagined the terrible scene over and over again, re-enacting in my own mind what all the witnesses actually did. Later I always thought of Kitty Genovese when the Genovese crime family was mentioned; and also when I saw Genovese drug stores.

I remember when everybody was reading Richard Brautigan. I really liked Trout Fishing in America. The idea that that could be the name of a person. And for some time I signed letters "As always," just as Lee Melon did in A Confederate General from Big Sur.

posted by william 7:06 AM
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