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

Sunday, November 28, 2004

From Rachel Wetzsteon (Happy Birthday!):

I remember, as a teenager, finding out through a loose-lipped friend that my father was throwing me a surprise birthday party, showing up at the party, and getting a weird kick out of feigning surprise: Oh but you shouldn't have! How did you arrange it so cleverly?

I remember a tall, sullen guy in my ninth-grade science class nicknamed "Mailbox" for no apparent reason.

I remember my frogs Max (fat and cheerful) and Sylvester (small and wily) and the plastic container of (stunned and repulsive) mealworms we kept in the refrigerator for them.

I remember a doll called Darcy who was all the rage when I was ten or so. Her scalp swiveled so that she could be blonde one minute, raven-haired the next.

I remember the cat with the guitar in B. Kliban's Cat, singing "Love to eat they mousies,/ Mousies what I love to eat,/ Bite they little heads off,/ Nibble on they tiny feet."

I remember the hopelessly cool kids on Zoom ("I'm Bernadette!") and how I so badly wanted to be one of them. How, I wondered, were they chosen? Did you audition, or did you have to know someone?

I remember Etch-a-Sketch.

I remember Reinforcements, those white adhesive paper rings you placed around the holes in your sheets of looseleaf paper so they'd stay put in the binder. And also the sickly green container they came (come?) in.

I remember developing a morbid fear of Charles Manson and nervously checking the newspaper each time he was up for parole.

I remember the sad day the New York City tokens lost the "Y" in their centers. The new ones were small and hard and bright and there was really no good reason to dislike them, but somehow they seemed greatly diminished, pale shadows of their former selves.

I remember false memory: telling my mother very proudly one day that I remembered where we were when we watched the moon landing on t.v. -- corner of the living room, rug, metal folding chairs -- and her telling me, no, that couldn't be right. I remember thinking I was too young for my memory to be playing such cruel tricks on me. I still think this when I forget things, however small.

--Rachel Wetzsteon (in high retrospective mode on her birthday, hoping
blogger will feel free to edit as he sees fit)

posted by william 10:33 PM
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