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 13, 2005

I remember the swings in the houses of older relatives. Usually on the porch, but sometimes in the drawing room. The idea didn't seem right to me. Swings belonged in the playground, and were meant to go far and high... they weren't consistent with these staid pieces of furniture with cushions that were rocked frustratingly gently. And the adults would sometimes tell the kids to go play on the 'swing' if they looked bored -- which again seemed like they were confusing the kids' ideal of a swing with theirs.

Which makes me remember a poem in our English reader in 3rd or 4th grade, about swinging so high that it felt like moving forward in space, like running over the fields and traveling to distant countries. There was an illustration of a girl standing up on the swing (which was a lot more fun, once you conquered the initial hesitation). And a poem in the Hindi reader the same year about swinging, but with not the same exhilaration, illustrated with a porch swing. I loved the song, Dil Kya Kare from the 70s' Julie movie, but hadn't (still haven't) seen it, so 'julie' in the lyrics brought to mind a swing (jhula) instead. I imagined they were on one during the song. I guess I ended up making a language as well as an age separation for the swings.

posted by sravana 12:30 AM
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