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 23, 2004

I remember TV dinners. In that pre-microwave age (yes, people had "radar ranges" just as they had color TVs, but we didn't, and they weren't standard) TV dinners came in aluminum trays and were covered with foil. They were fun to eat, although no one ever liked the hot apple sauce. When my parents didn't come home for dinner I used to sit in the pantry on the step-ladder, watching the little portable TV there and eating my TV dinner. My downtown grandparents had a TV tray, or what I thought was one -- maybe it was just a little side table -- which I thought of as perfect for putting the TV dinner down on. I think I usually ate Salisbury Steak.

posted by william 8:26 AM
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