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, September 05, 2002

I remember a science kit that I got. One of the first (and easiest) experiments was siphoning with a hose. It was amazing that water could go upout of a pitcher on our dining room table, into a pink rubber hose (I still remember the taste in my mouth of the cool water through the clammy rubber) and into a glass on a chair. This was one of the first times science surprised me. My downtown grandfather was there, and he wasn't surprised, nor did he feign it. He never did. I once showed him a moibus strip and he just said, "That's because you twisted it." He was very good with cards and gambling and other tricks, but for some reason didn't appreciate my appreciation for any tricks that he didn't do.

posted by william 7:30 AM
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