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

Thursday, June 17, 2004

I remember learning about the equator. My mother told me it was the hottest place in the world. "An imaginary line." Somehow the idea was thrilling. And then I remember that Ecuador was named after the equator which runs right through it. So it seemed thrilling to be a citizen of Ecuador, a country whose essence was that it was at the equator.

posted by william 6:26 PM
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