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 24, 2004

I remember my mother not wanting "all this commotion." She'd hold her ears. She also didn't want our house to be "Grand Central Station." And later, when we wanted stuff to eat at times other than meal-times (and of course didn't eat what was served at meal times) she told us she wasn't "running a hotel." Which gave me a vision of a possible loveliness I'd never dreamt of withheld.

posted by william 8:20 AM
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