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

Monday, March 22, 2004

I remember various practical jokes from cartoons -- in particular giving someone a hotfoot -- that you never saw in real life. But I do remember one day when the teacher was late, a substitute, I think, and someone decided to put a tack on her seat, like in the comics (maybe in Archie?). After this it's somewhat hazy, but those of us with bad consciences managed to avoid the potential disaster -- either we warned her or we got the tack off before she came in. I don't think we warned her, because somehow we realized -- somewhat to our anxious horror -- that it would have worked. She didn't look at the chair before sitting down. Maybe we put a sticker or tape or a reinforcement or something there and it did stick to her bottom (as I would have thought of calling it). It was shocking to think that we might, if we'd wanted, actually have been able to cause her physical pain.

posted by william 11:21 AM
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