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

Friday, January 02, 2004

I remember that we used to work paperclips back and forth till they broke in half and then use the half-paperclips as projectiles with rubber band slingshots. They really stung and were of course quite dangerous to the eyes. But they were really fun. I didn't quite get how David killed Goliath with a slingshot, till I saw an illustration and someone explained to me that that was what a real slingshot looked like. But I liked the ones that consisted of a rubber band and your fingers, or sometimes a rubberband and a forked stick.

posted by william 11:54 PM
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