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, July 14, 2002

I remember that the secret to invisible ink was lemon juice. (I think this was in The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook.) You wrote with lemon juice, and to read it you held the paper over a candle. But this was all terribly disappointing, because 1) you could read the lemon juice writing just by looking at the paper; and 2) heating it up didn't boost the contrast very noticeably anyhow.

I remember that The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook urged you to increase this magical faculty: your "powers of observation." Chet couldn't tell you what someone who'd been in the store was wearing; Frank and Joe could. Chet couldn't tell whether the red or the green light was on top in a traffic light, without looking: Frank and Joe could. I could too! So I thought I might have some powers of observation. I tested my mother on the traffic light question. She guessed green was on top! I think it took my five years or so to realize she was just pretending not to know.

posted by william 12:45 AM
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