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, December 28, 2004

I remember spending Christmas with the Clurmans in Quiogue. They were Jewish but had a tree. It was a white Christmas, and somehow that was when I became aware that white Christmases were rare, that it usually didn't snow in New York or Long Island until January. I think that was the weekend I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull there, and either I loved the name Jonathan and so read it, or that it made me love the name Jonathan, so that I liked Jonathans after that, from the book of Kings to my best friend Jonathan D, sister of Belinda D (whose name made me interested in Pope).

posted by william 8:28 AM
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