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, January 17, 2004

I remember Jonathan Easton casually standing on his head one day. He'd come in to some exercise we -- but who were we? maybe those of us performing in The Bald Soprano? maybe Searchers, the NOLS / Outward Bound-like program we were doing? (but I vaguely think Jonathan was in Searchers too; I know I convinced someone unlikely and interesting to do it with me); maybe soccer practice? maybe just hanging out? -- some exercise we were doing, which included various mildly impressive postures. I could just about do the standard circus headstand -- head and hands form a triangle, and you put your knees on your elbows and then straighten up. And Jonathan just did this other thing, smoothly and wonderfully, part of his grace being the casual way he did it, without being at all impressed with himself. I'm glad that thanks to this blog we've remade some tentative contact.

posted by william 10:40 PM
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