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, August 12, 2004
I remember that the trainer at the place we stayed in Milano Maritima played in long white pants. I think this was the first time I saw full length white pants, and I liked the lazy, aging, dissolute Italian way he moved slowly but deliberately around the court, always returning my mother's shots with smooth, calm ground strokes. The white pants were an important part of the effect: no need for the freedom of movement nor the exposure ot the breeze that we more active but less dissolutely skilled duffers required.


posted by william 7:14 PM
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