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, May 20, 2006

I remember that my mother wouldn't let me say "Hey." Hugh and his family used the word a lot, which was part of his dangerous charisma for me, on a par with his going to bed as late as 11:00.

I remember that, but don't remember when he began using the language that so surpised my parents and thrilled me, language his parents both used too. I remember his mother saying "Oh, shit" once, mildly, when she was looking for something in a bookshelf. (My parents didn't believe me.)

By then "hey" had lost its edge for me, but I remember that it still had that edge when there was occasion (maybe at Stormville, maybe at the Claremont stables) to talk about hay.

posted by william 7:41 AM
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