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, October 29, 2002

I remember the dollar bills taped behind counters in bakeries. Cake Masters had one, and Lichtman's had one. I don't think Party Cake did. I remember somehow figuring out that this was the first dollar the business made. When silver certificates became valuable, I remember thinking that the silver certificate Cake Masters had taped up (you could tell it by its blue seal) was worth a lot. Like my grandmother's trove of silver coins.

posted by william 12:09 AM
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