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 24, 2003

I remember that after the first moon landing, Pan Am started taking passenger reservations for shuttles to the moon. My eighth grade teacher Mr. Donahue (or maybe it was Mr. Baruch) told us that he'd made a reservation for himself and his wife. Peter Rogers pointed out that he wasn't married. Mr. Donahue said that the reservation agent (I think we called them operators then) had asked him the same question and that he'd replied, "I plan to be by the time this ever happens." We were shocked that he'd committed himself to this expensive and demanding undertaking. There was an incompatibility between authorities: Pan Am's booking offer and Mr. Donahue's skepticism. He was amused by our shock, and his amusement impressed me. I think it was the first time I was consciously aware of savoir faire, of the fact that someone could know that the world worked differently from its official institutions (like Pan Am's reservations office).

posted by william 7:29 AM
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