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

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

I remember that "Veteran's Day" used to be "Armistice Day." My grandparents still called it that when I was a child; and I think some calendars called it both. Or it was like carrying the one vs. exchanging it: some adults used to insist on the older terminology. My grandfather fought in the First World War so for him it was Armistice Day. I guess it still is in Europe; and so maybe it wasn't an atavism but a Europeanism. Then I forgot this, but was reminded of it in seventh or eighth grade when I read Slaughterhouse Five, in which Vonnegut deplores the changed name, and the dishonor it does to the dead.

posted by william 10:12 PM
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