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, February 12, 2003

I remember sitting on phone books at restaurants. This was before they routinely provided booster seats. I remember sitting on a phone book at La Fonda del Sol, and also my sister and some of the younger Schubins, later, sitting on phonebooks at the White Plains Chinese restaurant we used to go to with them. (I always confused White Castle with White Plains, I now see: I think I thought that White Plains was where White Castle restaurants originated.) At some point we went to some other place, and went out to a restaurant, and my sister (I guess) needed a phone book to sit on. But we weren't in New York any more, and the phonebooks were slim flimsy things that did no good at all.

posted by william 3:22 PM
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