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, June 14, 2006

I remember when my hair was long enough that I could chew on it. Barely. It was always a struggle with my mother about when I had to have a haircut. I was one of the shorter-haired kids. But if I pulled it straight down over my forhead, down past my eyebrows, plumb down past my nose, I could first just touch it with the tip of my tongue, and then occasionally, if I could delay the trip to barber long enough, actually chew it, although this took some jaw-stretching articulations of my teeth. My hair never got to be long enough that it was as satisfying as chewing on the laces of my mitt. But it felt like a symbolic achievement to be able to get it to my mouth.

posted by william 1:23 AM
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