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, April 01, 2006

I remember the first and only time that I ever hitchhiked. It was raining and I was with my dad and he'd gotten a flat tire near the dairy and sought a ride home (which was 2-3 miles away). I was young enough not to question his decision but old enough to know that this was a bad idea; it was something he had cautioned us against. Everything happened so fast: he lit a cigarette, and, within seconds, someone picked us up. What surprised me, and impressed me, was his confident air, as if (could it be?) he had done this before.

posted by jennylewin 2:54 PM
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