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, January 09, 2006

I remember I tried opening the window of the playhouse (see below) once and jabbed the heel of my hand against the pane to punch it open. The pane broke and I was mortified that I had Broken a Window - something that mischeivous kids like Dennis the Menace did on TV and adults yelled at them for. I was sure that it would mean falling out of grace with the Sterns. I bled a little and ran home, mostly because I was afraid Jerry Stern would be mad at me about the window.

A little while later Lynda got me and said that her father was concerned about my hand and didn't care at all about the window. I was amazed at and thoroughly touched by this order of preferences. I hadn't fallen out of grace - I had come a step closer to it.

posted by caroline 3:13 AM
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