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, July 20, 2004

I remember mosquito netting in the hotels in Italy that we used to go to. I think especially in Milan, and maybe in Bellagio the first year or two we went there. I remember that they hung over the beds in very fine mesh, but we didn't use them. (My two year old sister might have been covered though.) They were a relic from some other era, and interesting and elegant, like the hotels themselves. I regretted not needing them. They hung down from the posters of the poster-bed frame, or could be pulled down. I loved how sheer they were.

posted by william 4:22 PM
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