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

Thursday, December 01, 2005

I remember my world map jigsaw, and being especially fascinated by the new water bodies, or rather, by their names: Bering, Euphrates, Sutlej, Gibraltar. I remember the watermark on the puzzle that said something to the effect of Britannia Rules the Waves. I remember being surprised that Tunisia was not in Australia, and that Singapore was not in India, because that's where the names seemed to belong. I remember looking for a place named Peking, and thinking it was a product of my imagination when I didn't find it.

posted by sravana 12:14 AM
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