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, December 18, 2002

I remember that after seeing Mary Poppins -- my first Julie Andrews movie -- I got the book (or maybe we had it), and I was shocked and disgusted by what I read. Not that Mary Poppins was actually elderly, but that when the children are hungry she breaks off one of her fingers and gives it to them to eat: it turns out to be toffee or treacle or some such. I couldn't believe it. I read no further.

posted by william 12:20 AM
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