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 04, 2003

I remember that when she was five my mother's shoulders were dislocated when my grandfather swung her around in a centrifugal circle. I wasn't allowed to swing my sister around (though I did anyway, though not much), and I think I wasn't swung around myself.

I remember "being ridden" on bikes. "I'll ride you." You sit on the cross-bar in front of the seat. It's difficult and oddly proto-sexual. All that violent pumping and weaving around you, and you're jogged up and down a little and moved forward at a scary speed. But there's no pleasure or climax to it -- it's all just vaguely disturbing. I remember also being ridden on a motorcycle by some sibling of a friend. I think this was in Italy. I thought it would be like a bike only much more so. Instead: you sit behind the rider; you go very fast; and it's all smooth and stable. It wasn't exactly a disappointment, but it wasn't exactly not a disappointment either.

posted by william 5:54 AM
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