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

Thursday, June 20, 2002

I remember Uncle Martin's antennae in My Favorite Martian. I see now that they represented TV itself -- Ray Walston was an early precursor to Max Headroom. But I loved his powers: invisibility, levitation, all on the basis of the antennae. I guess these were powers also conveyed by TV: transport at a distance, and invisibility from the world. I always regretted not seeing the first episode; just as I regretted not seeing the first episode of Gilligan's Island. I remember that I wanted to come from Mars too, and later lied to my schoolmates and told them the next best thing, that I was born in Milano (as I called it). I remember also thinking that if I tried hard enough I'd be able to levitate things, and feeling a sort of muscular effort in my index finger-nails if I pointed them and tried hard enough to levitate (I can still do that). I remember thinking that Uncle Martin's antennae must have really hurt in the episode(s?) when they were bent. I remember not being sure whether it was a coincidence or not that he was called Martin. I remember watching both The Courtship of Eddie's Fatherand The Incredible Hulkall on the basis of my liking Bill Bixby because he was a team with Ray Walston. Now both are dead.

posted by william 7:32 PM
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