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

Monday, September 06, 2004

I remember my soccer cletes. They were black with yellow trim of some sort. I remember the pleasure of getting wet, grassy dirt out after playing, the way it would come off in clumps and sheets, rather like the Elmer's glue I used to peel off my fingers. I remember that you really weren't supposed to walk with them on concrete, though I did. They jarred when you walked, and I remember that strange rolling stride they made you take when you walked on cement or asphalt (the walk of an athlete), and the tap-dancing click they made. They were very light, and easily misshapen, but I loved them.

posted by william 10:58 PM
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