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

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

I remember learning to play Simon Says in school. I sort of knew about it, because people had talked about it in the park, but only that it was a game. Then in school we played it. I was terrible. I always obeyed authority. It was somehow viscerally shocking to me that a teacher might tell you to do something, and you could just defy her. It wasn't that I didn't get it, it was that my behavior was pure reflex.

posted by william 11:41 PM
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