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

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

I remember white tennis balls. Then the more visible green ones came in and they were pretty trendy. Then there was a vogue for fuschia. Fuschia! Luckily it passed. At the saddest moment of playing tennis, when it starts getting dark but you so want to keep playing, the fuschia ball tempted you to think it'll stay visible like a beacon in the gloaming. But it was more like a clown, and it got kind of bruised red and shadowy just as quickly as everything else. I'm glad they're gone. But I haven't seen a white tennis ball in a long time. I remember that Tretorn tennis balls were much too heavy and could give you tennis elbow.

posted by william 12:11 AM
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