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

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

I remember transistor radios. As with watches, their quality was measured in numbers of the relevant item: in this case transistors. I had one I used to listen to country music to when I was walking Powell, and also the other dogs I walked -- the toy poodle and the mutt. I also listened to ball games on it when I walked the dogs at night. It was black -- that is, metal covered with a kind of fake black leather whose smell I still remember. The smell mainly came out of the circular perforated panel over the speaker which I would hold up to my ear, its vinyl strap around my wrist. I think it smelled from the sweat I'd get on it on hot summer nights. I listened to Marv Albert, who was the Knicks and Rangers announced then. The smell and the static are very evocative for me now -- not involuntary memories but memories that would be involuntary if there were anything left like them to trigger them.

posted by william 6:53 PM
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