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 16, 2002

I remember that we would explore the woods near the cottage we rented from the Herings in Stormville. ( I remember that their New York number was FI 8-8888: easy to remember as FI(ve) eights.) Under the great willow tree behind the house was a stabilizing wire covered with a small horeshoe of rubber. I described it to my mother and she told me it was a lightning rod, but I don't think she was right. She explained what a lightning rod was, which seemed pretty interesting. Also, farther in the woods, we came upon stakes with little ribbons hanging on them. I asked her about these, and showed her one, and she said they were "limits." I thought that was strange and thrilling -- in the woods there was a place where the property ended and strange unknown property began, and these stakes which seemed as immemorial as the trees marked that place.

posted by william 9:51 AM
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