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

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

I remember subway workers on the tracks of the 96th street station. There was (probably still is) a way down to the tracks -- a kind of ladder-stair -- at the Northern end of the platform. I seem to remember the workers wearing yellow jumpsuits. This was before the advent of the bright red reflective-strip vests. What I remember that I think is different from today is that they would step into the columns between the tracks when trains came and wait till they left. This means that sometimes they'd be between two trains, with only a couple of feet of space to stand in. I think now that when workers go onto the tracks they shut the track down to avoid any possibility of accident. But then they just cooly, expertly, knew where and when to stand. I liked that expertise.

posted by william 7:27 AM
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