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

Sunday, September 18, 2005

I remember another public service spot with the song : "Don't cross the street in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle of the block!" with a girl playing jacks behind a parked car that then starts to back up.. Or am I condensing too spots into one? The song seems incongruous with the picture, now that I write it down.
At age 12 or 13 I was with my downtown grandfather in Chelsea and he was going to check if it was safe to cross in the middle of the block of a one way street . He had me stay safely on the sidewalk and he walked out to look beyond the parked cars to see if any traffic was coming before he would wave to me to follow suit. What he didn't see (but I did) was that a van parked 25 yards ahead was backing up full speed, for some reason (there were no cars parked between the van and the cars my grandfather was peering behind). I tried to equate if the van would hit my grandfather or if he would make it beyond the parked car in time. The van ended up swiping him and he sent him reeling, completely stunned, and I imagine bashed up a bit--it was a hard hit...But he managed to somehow keep on his feet. I'm SURE because I was in his care and he would never let himself lose control... The driver rushed out to help him-- and my grandfather yelled at him for not having watched where he was going. I was not to tell Granny or anyone what had happened, but of course I told mom later. She asked if I had screamed -- but I hadn't--partly because it would have been embarrassing to scream, which I hate admitting, but at 12 one's priorities were different...But, more comforting to think, I was in such confidence that my grandfather knew what he was doing and everything would be all right. And luckily it did turn out all right.

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