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

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

I remember that when we sang Had Gadyah (about the kid killed by the cat (was it?) chased by the dog beaten by the stick burned by the fire, etc. etc.) I was always puzzled by the fact that the angel of death seemed to be on the kid's side, while God, who punishes the angel of death seems against the kid. (Each punishment constituted a flip-flop, the innocent and their champions alternating with the evil and vicious: good attacked by bad rebuked by good attacked by bad, etc.)

posted by william 2:06 AM
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