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


Monday, October 10, 2005
John Hutnyk remembers:

I remember the windows of Myers department store which used to be a big draw in December - this is in Melbourne long long ago - I wonder if they are still there now. Then I remember that the "Sportsgirl" fashion chain did that huge window display with a picture of Mao Zedong with the caption 'Women Hold Up Half The Sky' - a twisted way to quote the cultural revolution. Mainly though, it's stores with trinkets and junk that appeal to me most - or the one I looked in yesterday, through a broken up board over the window, that let me see through to the detritus of a store long out of use. Bunged up shopping trolleys and layers of dust...


posted by william 6:42 AM
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