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

Saturday, February 11, 2006

I remember the old men coming out of the steam room at Grossinger's, getting massages, and standing in the needle showers, all off limits to me, which was fine. They were all big and vigorous and knew all sorts of things about physical culture that I'd never dreamt of. The needle showers were particularly interesting to me. Later, when I learned the word rake, I think in a James Bond novel, I thought of the needle showers as being like the rakes that the novel explained the courtisans stimulated the elderly rakes with. (I should check if that's what rake really comes from.)

posted by william 8:32 AM
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