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

Monday, July 17, 2006

I remember that my downtown grandfather would, in courtly mode, preface requests with the phrase, "Be so kind." "Be so kind and open the window." "Be so kind and pass the salt." I liked it.

I also remember a story he told about being in New York, I think, or maybe it was Sarajevo and hearing a woman say "Cerise" when she saw the new cherry-blossoms. She was Hungarian, maybe, and he was Bulgarian, but the word was the same, and he told me that when she said the word he struck up a conversation with her. She was a stranger, and grateful; but somehow also this was the only word they had in common. It might be that they'd already failed to communicate, until she said "Cerise," and then he could show that he knew what she meant and it was all ok. I remember that there was something of an achieved and lovely innocence about the surprising transparency, one that made him happy and made his face glow with pleasure when he told the story.

posted by william 12:34 AM
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