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

Monday, November 28, 2005

I remember the servant's buzzer - a flat button under the dining-room table and rug. The idea was that the hostess would discretely push on it with her foot signaling to the maid to come and clear the table. The only thing was, mom could never find the thing with her foot, so after dancing around with her leg under the table she would eventually give up and dive down to locate it...

posted by caroline 6:15 AM
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