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, April 11, 2003

I remember color guards. In assembly at the beginning one kid would carry the flag, or maybe there were two kids carrying two flags (which was the other? the U.N.? the State of New York?) and there was a color guard of two more kids walking with them down the aisle. I never knew how you got to be part of the color guard. It seemed an honor, although I didn't quite know how or why. I was surprised to find out later that color guards were part of the military flag rituals -- I think I realized this watching some funeral on TV: Bobby's maybe? Or maybe a fictional funeral.

posted by william 3:24 PM
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