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

Saturday, August 06, 2005

I remember one time I was particularly unwell, and being taken to get blood tests done, and feeling so weak and out of breath I couldn't change to go out, or even move or talk easily while at the clinic. It was a little scary that something essentially like fatigue could paralyse my body so much. I was a little delirious too, so there was a contrast between (what felt like) light and clear thinking and my physical sluggishness. But I was pleasantly surprised that the doctors treated me so normally, didn't react with either contempt or sympathy to what I imagined must look like strange behaviour.

posted by sravana 2:26 PM
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