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 30, 2003

I remember that when the lower level of the George Washington Bridge was built people called it the Martha Washington Bridge. They were in a very good mood when they talked about this. I thought everyone was just naturally in high spirits about the wonderful building that was going on. But I was always surprised that there weren't any signs to the Martha Washington Bridge: just lower and upper level. The lower level had been so normalized for me as the Martha Washington Bridge that it took decades before I realized that this was a joke. No one ever mentioned the Martha Washington Bridge, and I thought I had slightly arcane insider's knowlege, like knowing the Mets were actually the Metropolitans.

posted by william 6:01 AM
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