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

Sunday, June 25, 2006

I remember how much I liked calling my mother at worked. I also called my father at work but he was in the office far less often than she was. I knew her direct number and then when she changed offices I knew her secretary, who almost always put me through. It was reliably exhilarating to be able to reach her in a space I knew from having been there several times as hers, but not home. (I remember its being slightly eerie to see her on the phone in her office -- as though I was on the wrong side of the connection.) It wasn't home, but wherever my mother was, her voice was home to me; and so being able to talk to her in her office was like a promise of her presence, always available even when far away. It was like the happiness of talking to her through the bathroom door when I was little: home was on both sides.

posted by william 11:20 PM
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