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, June 06, 2005

I remember that we used to get custard at Carmel. I think this was real custard, but later when we went to get soft ice=cream at Carvel on 95th street my parents called that custard too. And I confused Carmel with Carvel, especially since I knew that carmel was somehow related to caramel. I think this was a confusion that persisted for years, and I'm not sure whether we went to Carvel in Carmel or some other place.

I remember that Carmel was also a Biblical name, though I didn't realize that the lake in New York was named after it. It seemed more like an unremarkable coincidence. (Is it a Biblical name, I suddenly wonder? Or did some burnt over thing take place somewhere near there or near some other Lake Carmel?) I remember the slightly guilty fun that such coincidences made possible, as when I used to put my finger over the last three letters of Shittim when reading the Bible.

posted by william 7:19 AM
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