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, April 02, 2003

I remember the origami fortune-telling devices we made in elementary school -- like fifth grade I guess. You fold down the top of an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper into a right triangle and sheer off the triangular part (with a ruler, like my grandparents, if you're good at it), which leaves you with a square (8.5 by 8.5). You fold its corners toward the middle, and then the next set of corners towards the middle, and then somehow (but how? I can't bring the trick to mind) you get a kind of pyramidal shape with slots for four fingers underneath. Written on the outside are a set of choices which the person whose fortunes you're telling gets to select from. Then you open up to one of two configurations on the inside (depending on whether the original choice led to an odd or an even number), which again presents a set of choices. I think they pick one here (color maybe?) and you unfold the triangle (or square?) they've picked and...there's their fortune! I wonder could I do it now if I tried.

[Five minutes later:] Well, my hands basically remembered how to do it! Although with some fumbling. First of all, the triangle you form is part of the square that remains: you sheer off the rectangular remainder. And then the infolding of the corners is separated by flipping the folded square, so that the second set of folds is on the other side from the first. Then the first set of folds is where you put your fingers, and the second is where the choices and fortunes are written. I was amazed at how small the device is -- I suppose this is the first time since I was my fifth-grade size that I've made one. Back then these things were hand-sized. They were a kind of paper glove into which thumbs and fore-fingers and even the knuckles at the back of one's hand disappeared. Now my hand dwarfs it.

posted by william 8:30 PM
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