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, November 09, 2005

I remember that a boy lived in the apartment across the courtyard from us and he had a swing in his doorway and we would watch from our kitchen window as he swung out of his room and back in again. He had blond, curly hair and symbolized a "real" family that did things like put swings up in apartments for their kids (I had another friend whose brother had a loft-bed with a fire pole you could slide down!!).

Once my grandmother had been out west and bought me a suede fringed Indian dress, beaded headband with feather, beaded necklace etc. I sat and peacefully ate my Fruit-Loops adornded in my new garb when I noticed the curly-headed boy spying on me across the canyon of the courtyard with a cowboy hat and pistol aimed at me! Yet another proof of his superiority.
I ran out of the kitchen, upset -- how long had he been watching?

posted by caroline 3:48 AM
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