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

Thursday, April 10, 2003

I remember that Patty Hearst hid out for nearly a year across the street from my building, on the North side of 90th between West End and Riverside. I only found this out later, when she'd surrendered. This was mildly interesting, because the building in whose basement apartment she'd been living was a building I only noticed when I walked the dog -- you spend a lot of time looking at the bases of buildings when dog-walking, since they sniff and pee there. I don't know why I didn't find this more interesting than I did, though -- maybe because it was (for me) ancient history when it became known.

posted by william 11:46 PM
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