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, October 20, 2002

I remember my elementary school French class. Mrs. Park would come in and say, "Bonjour, Classe!", to which we would reply in unison, "Bonjour, Madame." Then came "Comment allez-vous?" "Tres bien, merci, et vous?" "Tres bien, merci." Then names: "Comment tu t'appelle?" "Je m'appelle Guilluame." Then words: "Bouche," and she'd point to her mouth, and "fenetre." I rather think that was it. The cool kids would sometimes say "Comment vous vous appellez?" which we were informed was another way of saying "Comment tu t'appelle?" None of this was spelled out or broken down into individual words for us. These were ritual phrases. I didn't know how the kids who said "Comment vous vous appellez?" knew about this alternative sequence of phonemes. They were like the kids in music class who had recorders instead of the Tonettes the rest of us got. They knew things.

posted by william 12:52 AM
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