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, July 15, 2004

I remember a couple of Michael Hobin's routines in seventh grade. In one he half-squatted like in the vaudeville routine where hands and knees criss-cross and opening and closing his legs very rapidly (also like in the routine), he said "Dicky-itchy." We laughed and laughed. And he was fond of his own nonce-term, used where later one might use "absitively-posolutely." He said "exacatacally." This is the first time I've ever tried spelling it out.

posted by william 3:26 PM
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