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, February 08, 2004

I remember a red ball. I think I remember the same ball rolling. (I also remember a ball with a blue stripe or pair of stripes, that was bigger, and maybe also a wooden ball of some sort.) I think I remember the red ball rolling because I think I remember that I figured out that to get it you couldn't run to where it was but had to anticipate where it was going. I was glad to realize this, but there was no sense of triumph to it, because, I think, I also thought it made the world much more complex than it had to be.

posted by william 6:27 PM
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