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

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

I remember that after breakfast and after my father left for work my mother would call her mother every morning. Her bright and happy greeting -- "Ciao, Mamina!" -- was part of the morning hubbub in the house, along with vacuum cleaner, clattering dishes, doorbell ringing with the delivery of shirts or dry cleaning, windows opened to traffic noise and radio and TV from other open windows, all somehow the sound of bright morning sunlight in the city apartment. The sun seemed noisy, and the noisiness was that of getting things set right during the revving-up part of the day. My mother went to work a little later. I think this must be a summer memory, that I must have been out of school for summer vacation, so it was all the hubbub of waiting around for things to die down so that I could see my friends or go out with them or watch the TV shows I wanted to watch. But I liked the happiness with which she greeted her mother every morning. Those sounds seemed so permanent and natural a soundscape, and now the apartment itself is gone from my life.

posted by william 12:28 AM
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