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


Sunday, January 08, 2006
I remember the Sterns' playhouse. It was officially Lynda's, but Geoffrey, my best friend (as Lynda was my younger sister's) put the most work into it, and filled it with cushions, giving it a Persian feel. It was outside their house, across a little grass alley. I remember that somehow I brought the Hoges over one day, and we all sat around and listened to Aftermath, which I think belonged to the Hoges, but maybe not since Geoffrey himself was particularly fond of "Mother's Little Helper." I remember thinking this meant the Stones were anti-drug.


posted by william 11:38 AM
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