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, July 12, 2006

I remember going to see Superman with my dad at the Dedham movie house when I was young, probably 5 or 6. And the line was really long—it wrapped around at least half the building, and it went slowly. We started hearing rumors that it was sold out as we got closer and closer to the ticket booth, and, finally, when we were face to face with the person selling tickets we found out that it indeed was sold out and that we could get tickets for the next show, 3 hrs later, if we wanted to. My dad turned to me and asked what I wanted to do—I could tell he was putting me in charge of making whatever decision I wanted to, and I was very nervous about doing the wrong thing. But I also thought that 3 hrs was a long time; I couldn't imagine waiting that long, so I said I didn't want to wait, and we walked out of the theater and back to the car. I thought he'd be mad, even yell at me (even though that wasn't, and isn't, his character at all) for wasting the time we spent in line. But amazingly, he didn't yell-- we just calmly went home. I wasn't relieved so much as puzzled, and disappointed in myself, like I'd let us both down, ruined the outing in a way I couldn't have imagined. (I asked my dad about this episode and he doesn't even remember it at all.)

posted by jennylewin 12:29 AM
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