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

Monday, November 17, 2003

I remember step-ladder chairs. In Vertigo Jimmy Stewart steps on one just like the one my downtown grandmother had. They were high-seated chairs, for sitting at counters, with backs, yellow or red metal (the Hoges might have had a red one), with steps that you could pull out so that you could stand on them, pressing your shins up against the back for a feeling of added security, added sense of balance. You used them to change light bulbs. I remember falling down face first at my grandmother's house off the step-ladder. I was a sheet of red pain from feet to face, but I held back my tears. They were very proud of me; I was very proud of myself, and for a long time I would refer to this time, asking them (in front of my parents, in front of their friends) whether they remembered the time I fell of the step-ladder "and I didn't even cry."

posted by william 6:17 AM
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