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

Saturday, November 06, 2004

I remember my parents returning from voting once, maybe when I was 6. It was late morning, not a time they usually came home. I asked them who won and they said that the Democrats had. They always did. I don't know what election this was. And of course the results weren't in till later. But I was glad that our side, the side that called on them for support, won.

I remember Frank Ryan campaigning outside the 86th Street Subway station. I think this was the year Bella Abzug defeated him (when the number of districts shrunk). Then he got sick and died.

I remember my father taking me to vote. At P.S. 166! Where we usually lined up for recess there were voting machines. And grownups in coats lined up. We waited and then went into the booth, pulling the lever which closed the curtain. He showed me how you could flick the wrong toggles and then change them -- he flicked Republican toggles! but then unflicked them -- and then we voted Democratic all the way down (except, maybe, for Javits) and he let me pull the lever which registered the vote and opened the curtain simultaneously, which I thought was pretty neat.

I remember Democrats winning.

posted by william 8:45 AM
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