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

Sunday, April 04, 2004

I remember that my mother always asked for sugar cones. My father was fine with wafers. I also liked sugar cones, but didn't really like to ask. I remember also that when we had ice-cream at home as a treat (often when my father was away and my mother was trying to compensate with a touch of festivity, like that of eating TV dinners) we'd have ice cream on Comet sugar cones. Do they still exist? It seemed a little odd that cones and cleansers had the same name, but I shrugged it off, as one did at that age.

posted by william 9:12 AM
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