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, October 25, 2003

I remember frontsies backsies. To let someone cut in line, you let them in front of you, and then they let you in front of them: now they were in the line. This seemed unfair to me when I was its victim, and eminently fair when I was its beneficiary. Interestingly, I thought the phrase was "front seats back seats" which didn't make sense but didn't not either, and at least was real English. So invented baby-talk is at a higher level than standard vocabulary.

posted by william 11:36 AM
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