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 11, 2004

I remember that McGovern picked Eagleton, and then he turned out to have had electroshock (I think). McGovern was behind him 1000% until he then went to Sargent Shriver, who was supposed to be a Kennedy, but didn't strike me as one. I remember that the New York Magazine monthly competition was about double dactyls or something similar that month, and that one of the honorable mentions was:

Up again, down again
Thomas F. Eagleton,
George was behind you
1000%
Bum ba bum bum ba bum bum ba bum bum ba bum
Then as the nation (and Maine) goes
He went.

I liked recognizing the saying: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation," which I think Mr.Grotsky told us about in history when explaining bellweather states. But I didn't quite get how the parantheses fit grammatically; now it makes sense, but not quite the logical sense I then expected it to.

posted by william 11:10 PM
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