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

Saturday, April 17, 2004

I remember having to write about an embarrasing moment at the beginning of the school year -- maybe in seventh grade. I wrote about seeing a woman naked through the window of her hotel room in Bellagio, which I thought I mentioned here, but can't find now. My sister and I were eating on the terrace in Bellagio, and I looked up to see a woman I saw often on the beach, saw often lying face down on her towel, reading (including The Autobiography of Malcolm X, her bathing suit strap undone to give her back an even tan, come out of the bathroom naked. She saw me see her and a look of horror crossed her face as she grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her, then approached the window to close the blind. I didn't see this part because I looked away, horrified myself, and didn't glance at her window again. I wanted to eat dinner quickly, and get away before she came out. I had visions of her talking to the dinner-jacketed head-waiter I liked so much, and his looking at me with reproachful surprise. I remember the scene and also remember remembering it when I wrote about the embarrasing moment, in which I described being "afraid she would sue." My teacher or my parents or both were amused and impressed by this phrase. and by the whole incident, and their amusement, a couple of months after the event, decathected it for me. It was really interesting to have this tense interior adventure come out so much after the fact and get defused.

posted by william 3:57 PM
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