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, April 04, 2006

I remember the first blister I noticed. Other kids had them, I was vaguely aware -- I think the first kid I knew had blisters was the boy we walked around the walls of Dubrovnik with. I remember that he had two on his hands, and I was both interested and somewhat perturbed by them -- especially because his father kept making him leave them alone. The first one I noticed on myself was at my uptown grandmother's house. It was on my thumb. I have no idea how I got it, and don't think I had any idea then. I remember noticing it before going to bed on her dining room couch: I was sleeping over but my parents were still there at some holiday celebration, in the living room where I usually slept when I spent the night there, and I went to bed before they left. The blister hurt a lot, and I was surprised when I popped it that it contained water, not blood. I was also surprised, and pleased, that it hurt less then, and I didn't tell anyone about it. I was a little nervous about this, but it turned out to be fine.

posted by william 9:08 AM
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