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

Saturday, October 05, 2002

I remember thinking that everyone had a double. I got this idea from The Hardy Boys. The books had sentences like: "I saw either Frank or his double." The casual his seemed to mean we all had doubles. I wondered where mydouble was. For some reason I imagined him in India. I assumed he'd be just like me: friendly, thoughtful, anxious, shy. I wondered whether he'd be wondering about me at the same time. I could be reassuring to him: tell him I was just like him, which might make him feel more relaxed.

posted by william 2:24 PM
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