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 08, 2004

I remember my uptown grandmother identifying a cement mixer for me when we were driving one day. I was six or so. I don't know whether she pointed the truck out to me or whether I was the one who saw it and asked her about why it was revolving. But it was very interesting: the conical body of the truck, big and dense and graceful all at the same time. I always associate ugly, big, elegant, interesting, effective machinery with my grandmother: you could trust her and you could trust these machines in the same way. There was nothing remotely seductive about them; but they were solidly competent and made the world just the comfortable place you wanted the world to be.

posted by william 2:13 PM
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