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

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I remember that when we went to the movies, the heads in front of me always blocked my view of part of the screen, like a fringe of out-of-focus carpenter's gothic. My father always sat us towards the back in the middle of the row, and I saw no reason (then) for not sitting in the front; but none of the people we disturned in the aisles seemed to mind or even be puzzled by where we were going to sit. But then I'd worry about the heads; and yet somehow when the movie started they became invisible and I forgot they were there.

posted by william 6:31 PM
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