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, May 07, 2004

I remember that in maybe second grade someone brought a coconut into school. We'd been talking about coconut milk. She said that her father would open coconuts with hammers, and we tried this. This was surprising to me -- a fruit you opened with a hammer -- but the whole thing was surprising. I'd never seen anything so exoctic as a coconut -- like another one of those cartoon items materializing in reality.

posted by william 10:15 PM
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