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

Thursday, July 21, 2005

I remember "Born Free." It was a paperback book we had. I couldn't read it, or thought I couldn't, because it was not a children's book. I looked at the photographs in the middle of the book. One in particular puzzled me, a picture of chlidren sitting on an elephant. The caption listed their names; I read & read but I always ended up with one name more than the number of children.

The caption was: "Atop Margie, left to right: Frank, Betty, Oscar,..." etc.

My misreading also caused me to mispronounce "Margie," when I said it in my head. The stresses of the 'first' name, "Atop," sort of forced a flourish onto the last syllable of the 'last' name, "mar-GEEE."

posted by Carceraglio 2:09 AM
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