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

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

I remember that today is my sister's birthday, and that I posted about her birth here. I remember further that on that Passover meal at my uptown grandparents' my mother was sitting to my right, and that she pushed away the matzoh ball soup, on the fancy lace my grandmother had spread over the dining room table, and said she had to go. I remember findinv it noteworthy how quickly -- not hastily but quickly -- she and my father left to walk to the hospital. That was the night of April 18, and she was born the next day. Happy birthday Caroline!

posted by william 7:36 AM
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