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, April 02, 2005

I remember Mr. Donohue, in Seventh grade math I think, ragging on my friend Fred Cohen. He had said something wackily wrong, maybe intentionally. Mr. Donahue, said, "God is that silly. What were you, born on April Fool's Day?" Fred, triumphantly wielding the truth in response: "No -- I was born ten minutes after midnight on April 2." Mr. Donahue, without missing a beat: "See, you couldn't even do that right." I was astounded with how quick and funny his comeback was.

posted by william 8:33 AM
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