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, December 08, 2003

I remember a kid with a bite plate (I don't remember his name). He could remove and take it out with his tongue, displaying it by turning his head around. It was disgusting, the sort of negative space version of my grandparents' taking their dentures out. And then of course he was young and they were old. In fact he was younger than we were but was able to disgust us -- and so he had power over us.

posted by william 6:42 PM
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