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, April 11, 2005

I remember my cowboy hat, which I think I had before I got the rest of my cowboy regalia, and my Indian Chief feather dress cap. I remember being surprised, a little later, that most Indians only wore one feather, not the whole train. (And later still, a Cherokee came to visit our class, in civies, which was really interesting.) I remember getting the regalia, the revolver, which I liked, the belt, which hung too low, and which had bullets which I didn't get since it was a caps revolver. I remember that I thought the holster and belt would be like that which belonged to policemen, so I think that's what disappointed me. I remember the string on my cowboy hat, and the pleasure of sucking it, and I remember the bordering worked on the edge of the brim, and how I didn't understand what that was for.

posted by william 10:04 AM
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