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

Friday, May 05, 2006

I remember the reason I thought both my parents smoked. One night at a party when my father was smoking -- I think this was in Stormville, but it may have been at someone else's house, since I remember a lot of my parents' friends being there -- my mother took a drag from my father's cigarette. (I remember that she was sitting below him on some stairs near where they turned a corner and I can't quite figure out where this could be. )

My mother took a drag from my father's cigarette, and I remember how beautiful she looked, how beautiful her act looked. The ember got bright. It was as though she was transferring some of her beauty into that ember, so the act, and the gaiety of the evening, and the elegance of her movements and the radiance of the ember and the good fellowship all around came together and it was all focussed, as was absolutely appropriate, on her.

posted by william 11:43 AM
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