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

Monday, October 14, 2002

I remember sherbert. With that second R. That's the way we spelled it in New York. I was surprised afterwards to find that everyone else spelled it sherbet. The et looked (and still looks) absurd to me. I thought I must have been mistaken, until once back in New York I found that it was still spelled with the second R in some diner I went to there. Rainbow sherbet? I think not.

I remember, I think, that Brach's had a dining counter, where one's grandmothers would eat downtown.

I remember that fingernails have little half-moons at their base.

I remember how much my fingers used to pucker up in the bathtub. Why don't they do that anymore? Or do I just not notice it?

posted by william 12:08 AM
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