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

Sunday, January 04, 2004

I remember noticing for the first time that my watch was causing that bright disk to move around the classroom walls and ceiling, and then spending my time controlling it, no interest at all in the class, and then being sharply rebuked, more than once. Sometimes other kids' watches also reflected off the surfaces of the rooms, as they talked or wrote or gesticulated, and I would try to trail or pursue their reflections with my own.

posted by william 2:28 AM
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