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

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

I remember my parents but especially my grandparents talking about sending "regards" to people. "Give my regards to Mrs. Rotkopf." "Send him my regards." I knew that regards weren't real things in the world (any more than a "sake" is, as in Tom Hoge, Sr.'s reiterated "For Christ's sake!"), but I was still impressed by the way adults could handle, wield, manage, direct, and convey these insubstantial and inchoate entities. Imagine being able to control the fate of one's regards. Imagine having regards. I was very impressed.

posted by william 4:57 PM
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