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

Monday, June 10, 2002

I remember the little chrome fasteners on opera windows on cars (the triangular windows between the main window and the frame). You used to be able to open these windows, and get a little air into the car, which you could direct by the angle that you pivoted the window towards. I think the windows stopped opening when safety engineers decided that the chrome fasteners were a hazard, once they tried to recess everything in the interiors of cars, since they were a projecting piece of metal. It used to be these fasteners that you used a wire hanger to pull open when you were locked out of the car -- then you'd reach in and unlock the door. They were a great occupation for your hands on long car rides -- you could open and shut the latch, hang your fingers from its loop, press your mouth and tongue up against it, etc.

posted by william 11:00 AM
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