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, April 03, 2005
I remember that in 1978 when Pope Paul VI died the New York Times was on strike. John Paul took his name as a tribute to his two predecessors. (I remember when John XXIII died and my father's genuine grief, since he was humane, liberal, humble, penitent, all of which was part of the architecture of Vatican II.) I remember that there was comment on this two-named Pope. The he died a month later, and John Paul II took his name as a tribute to John Paul I. And the Times was still on strike. I remember an executive of the paper lamenting that they had missed the death of not just one pope but two!


posted by william 8:46 PM
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