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

Saturday, May 10, 2003

I remember the bright point of light that persisted on a TV screen when you turned it off. On the older TVs, my uptown grandmother's for instance, it could last for five minutes. This was the opposite of the tubes warming up. It was a pain for clandestine TV watching, since just turning off the TV didn't get rid of the evidence. On our TV, I'd snap it off immediately if I heard the elevator coming. Since the point disappeared faster at our house (especially if the light was on, dimming the contrast) that would give me just enough time. If my parents suspected we'd been watching though, they'd feel the TV to see whether it was still warm. So the evidence was still there, only not quite so obvious. The perfect situation was one in which they'd tell us that they wouldn't be home till 7:30. Star Trek was on 6-7, so there'd be a half hour for cool down, and we'd be ok. But of course it was hard to turn the TV off, and I remember the temptation to watch minute by minute into the danger zone which should have been reserved for dissipating the evidence.

posted by william 9:36 AM
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