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, August 03, 2004

I remember that British sailors were called "limeys" because they discovered that sucking on limes would prevent scurvy on long sea-voyages. I remember learning this at P.S. 166. It was interesting that something of genuine historical interest -- since I loved stories about the sea: Jack London, Nordhoff and Hall -- should matter as well in my practical life, since we were always being told of the importance of eating fruits with vitamin C in them.

posted by william 7:22 AM
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