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 04, 2002

I remember that in third grade Hugh Cramer would come over for a date, or I'd go to his house. Later, when I was thirteen or so -- I remember because I had a lot of acne and that came around thirteen -- I was friends with Lem Hering, who asked me about the acne: he was a few years younger than I. We'd arrange to meet, and he'd say, "It's a date!" I found this intensely embarrassing, since it wasn't a date. I wasn't dating yet, but I knew what a date was, I watched The Dating Game, and I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to date. But if I did (although I don't remember being in love at the time, except no doubt with Michelle Mailliet, the Gilberte of my early adolescence, whom I saw six weeks a year in Bellagio), it certainly wasn't with Lem. But I couldn't tell him any of this. He was frank and open, and I knew that it was just wrong of me to be annoyed and embarrassed.

posted by william 12:56 AM
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