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

Thursday, November 07, 2002

I remember, it being my birthday, a birthday party I had in second grade I think. I remember it because a few days before I had been swinging my pencil around like a rocket ship and as I whirled in my seat at my school desk I poked a girl named Mira in the eye. She sobbed uncontrollably; I resented her for getting me into trouble, or for being the occasion of my being in trouble; we were forced to reconcile, both of us unwillingly, me apologizing and she accepting my apology. Then I had to invite her to my birthday party. I was surprised that she came, and that she had on a really beautiful dress. And that she had a present for me, gift-wrapped, game sized! I imagine it must have been a game: but all I remember is what it looked like in its wrapping as she gave it to me. The dining room was unusually brightly lit (although in fact that might have been another time) because it must be that my father was taking a home movie of the party. I don't recall ever seeing that movie, but there is one of an earlier birthday -- maybe I was two? -- and I remember thinking how different and bright the dining room looked in the movie, how white and impressive the walls: so unlike the more normal dim dingy light of the room.

posted by william 10:59 PM
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