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


Wednesday, February 25, 2004
I remember feeding Powell (the dog) cans of wet dog food. I liked meatballs. You could get horsemeat too! (Now I think they just call it meat.) I liked the meatballs because they poured out of the can and you didn't have to use the dog-food spoon my mother had designated. I hated washing the spoon after feeding Powell. I also hated washing his dish, as my mother required me too, and I would try to just rinse it or just wipe it out with a paper-towel -- but never both. We put the dish on a rubber mat. I was grateful when Powell would lick it clean. But my mother was right -- both the dish and the mat attracted roaches.


posted by william 7:05 PM
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