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, December 07, 2005

I remember seeing prostitutes waiting on corners as I walked uptown on Broadway. I remember one with a white, feathery mantilla, smoking and looking beautiful (probably she wouldn't look beautiful to me now) and authoritative, but without any self-possession. I think that's because they also looked so cold, in the early winter dark, so scantily clad. I don't know how I came to recognize that they were prostitutes. They were there most evenings, but their look of waiting was just like that of people I recognized at the bus-stops and lights. But then one evening I realized that they were prostitutes, and it seemed like the opening of a whole new dimension in the neighborhood. Later my father, I think, said something about how they were bad for the neighborhood, or people didn't want them around, or something, and I couldn't understand that, since all they were doing was standing there, just like anyone else.

posted by william 7:13 AM
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