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

Friday, March 21, 2003

I remember "Roger, Wilco, Over and Out." What does wilco mean? Now as I type this I'm imagining it might be short for "Will copy," what the professionals now express by "Copy that." And I think I know what that means. I remember also first hearing "10-4," with my Heath-Cliff Jr., when we tuned in on a citizens' band frequency. (I liked this use of citizen -- I think it affected how I later thought about both Rousseau, Citoyen de Geneve, and the Citizen -- the Cyclops character -- in Ulysses.) One guy we listened to would use "10-4" as an all purpose word: I remember him saying -- "Ok I'll 10-4 that down to the highway. 10-4." I also think I know what "10-4" means -- essentially: "Roger."

posted by william 5:05 PM
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