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


Tuesday, June 10, 2003
I remember Fritz Peterson, the Yankees number 2 pitcher, a left hander, behind Mel Stottlemeyer. This was in the Yankees' worst period, when they were always near the cellar. But I could get them on the radio, which I listened to when walking the dogs, and so I listened to them. Frtiz Peterson was having a very good year at the plate that year -- batting .500 or so (it must have been early in the season, which might have been another reason it wasn't hopeless to be listening to them). He had hit a homerun. But the Yankees' manager always took him out for a pinch hitter if they needed one. I was outraged once when they took him out for a pinchhitter batting, like , .190. The pinchhitter made an out. And now they couldn't use Peterson any more either.


posted by william 1:02 AM
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