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

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

I remember, now, that my Uncle Cico was a survivor of the camps. I don't know which one. He was a kid -- I think he was 14 when he was liberated. My father told me that he told him the Germans would give the prisoners solid food (as opposed to soup) once a week, and they would throw it into the gutters and then kick and march on the prisoners who rushed to get it. I thought this was terrible but not that terrible; but I didn't know that my father was basically trying to keep knowledge of the camps from me, and strongly disapproved of his mother for telling me about them (and about my Uncle killed in the Pacific). Cico certainly never told me anything about them.

I remember meeting my Uncle Raffo, who had been one ot Tito's partisans and lived in Yugoslavia, in Belgrade, and was an M.D.

I remember meeting another family member who had a heart condition and was lying in a couch during our visit. My mothers' parents were with us on one of these visits to Yugoslavia, and I think my grandmother was saying goodbye to family members she was unlikely ever to see again. She had five brothers, of whom I met two or three. I don't know how the others died. Two whom I met were Mico and Raffo. And I might have met someone named Shuitsa. The man lying on the couch seemed sweet and weak -- schwach. I heard about a year later that he'd died. I don't know how I knew it was him, since I don't know who he was and don't recall ever knowing who he was.

I remember visiting my fathers' parents in Austria when they had taken a trip there and we were in Italy. We went through Trieste. so long and violently disputed. I remember going to Vienna, and remember lamp-posts there. But my father says they never went with me, so I guess I've never been to Vienna.

I remember being confused as to whether Alan Shephard or John Glenn was the first American in space. And there was one between them -- like Adams (whom we knew nothing of) between Washington and Jefferson.

posted by william 1:14 AM
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