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, December 30, 2002

I remember the kids who had bus passes. You put them in bus pass holders with two plastic windows. Hugh Cramer and I tried forging them. Mine were self-effacing, as unchallenging as possible, in light, #3 pencil. The color of the paper was never right. (They changed the colors of the pass every month.) Hugh's were bold and beautifully done in magic marker. They were very impressive and almost always worked. When they didn't he'd just run away. I think we started doing this after watching The Great Escape (or was it Stalag 17?) where they forged papers and printed them I think with shoe heels.

posted by william 7:01 PM
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