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

Friday, June 03, 2005

I remember that you need to moisten the needle before inserting it when pumping up a ball, and also that basketballs and footballs were absurdly more expensive than you'd anticipate, but that professional footballs were even more expensive than that.

I remember, maybe from the Hardy Boys, or a comic, or even from a fun fact on a Bazooka Bubble-gum strip, that your handwriting looks the same, no matter what part of your body you write with, so that cheaters who try to disguise their signatures by using their other hands or feet or mouths still get caught.

posted by william 7:25 AM
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