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 19, 2003

I remember when mailboxes were red on top, and then the rest were blue. They somehow looked more like policemen then. Certainly they were more anthropomorphic: the red top was like a cheerful head, with a mouth that could open unthreateningly because the whole thing was so friendly, large, and squat. I remember when they started being replaced by the all-blue boxes, which were more impersonal. It was like a friendly doorman or fireman retiring, or like the old lighter-green busses disappearing.

posted by william 12:19 AM
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