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

Friday, April 16, 2004

I remember sitting on the subway once and watching three toughs stride in. They walked purposefully to the middle of the car, leaned over a bunch of people sitting on the bench there, and slid the windows down. Then they strode out of the car -- all this in the interval that the door was open. This seemed odd, but then when the doors closed and the train started moving they reappeared on the platform and with a whoop reached in and scrunched the hair and hats of those sitting below the open window. I couldn't help grinning -- with pleasure? with relief? I'm not sure. It turned out to be so mild a version of delinquency.

I remember people who knew people whose brothers were JDs (juvenile delinquents).

posted by william 5:55 AM
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