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

Saturday, May 15, 2004

I remember the vogue -- or maybe just the day -- when some kind showed us the contemptuous Italian gesture of flicking your nails out under your chin. Our teacher (Mr. Donahue) saw this and disapproved. When we asked him what it meant he said "Nuts to you," as the kid who was doing it looked on in superior conspiritorial approval. And that was the first time I heard that expression. So I sort of learned both expressions of contempt simultaneously, and probably thought "nuts to you" was stronger than it was because of my teacher's attempt at mitigating the gesture by explaining it through this mild paraphrase.

posted by william 7:59 PM
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