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

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

I remember that a teacher at school asked the class if we knew what capitalism was. I shot up my arm and he picked me to answer. I didn't really know what it was but I had listened to the album Woodstock and at one point Wavy Gravy says something like "there are sandwiches and stuff to buy if your hungry, for those of you who don't think capitalism is all that bad!"
And based on that quote I instantaneously figured capitalism had something to do with making money. The class was so impressed, though I never revealed how I understood what it was.

posted by caroline 5:44 AM
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