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 23, 2006

I remember trying to fathom the meaning of the road- sign "Bridge may ice before road". I never could figure out which use of "before" was implied - time or space? In my mind, "before" in this context meant "in front of". Would the road right in front of the bridge ice up first - because the bridge would allow it to (The brigde may (is allowed to) ice the oncoming road..)? So complicated! I still always need to read the sign twice in order to unravel its philosophical knot and make the menal effort of reducing it to it's intended meaning.
Another hard nut to crack was "Up an' at 'em" .
Which I supposed was "Up and atom" or "Up and Adam", both equally puzzling.

posted by caroline 6:16 AM
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