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, March 19, 2003

I remember that Mr. Durocher used to throw chalk at us in seventh grade algebra. Everyone was terrified of him, I learned in sixth grade, when I found out that I'd be in his math class the next year. But I ended up really liking him -- I liked his energetically tough interaction with us. He was perpetually alert, and we couldn't put anything past him, which I really appreciated. How many people are alert to seventh graders? And he was a good teacher. He reminded me a little of my downtown grandfather. Later when I heard of Leo Durocher I assimilated the two of them in my mind -- I kind of had a soft spot for Leo despite his notorious visciousness, because I imagined him as being somewhat like my math teacher.

posted by william 2:41 PM
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