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, July 11, 2003

I remember station to station vs. person to person calls. The latter were three times as expensive. I remember waiting for the Operator to call you (my parents) back when they were trying to make an international call (over a "trunk line"). I didn't quite get how that worked. I'm not sure even now I do. I remember Richard Clurman, then Time / Life's vice-president, dictating a telegram to London. I'd gotten five word telegrams from my parents, and knew how brief they were in general. Clurman dictated for five minutes or so -- at least five-hundred words. I was very impressed -- close to shocked -- and amazed by the apparent aplomb of the Western Union operator, since he never had to interrupt himself to assure her that, yes, he knew how long this telegram was.

posted by william 7:44 AM
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