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

Friday, September 15, 2006

I remember learning the word "impossible" from my father. That is, I remember his way of replying "Impossible!" when he doubted a claim someone was making. My father always said it with good humor, so it had for me the tone of absolute but genial, smiling authority. He knew when something was impossible, so it was just a matter of knowledge, not of demand, and he was serenely in sync with knowledge.

I liked the sense the word gave me of the truth being both easy and uncompromising. It was his word: the truth was as authoritative as my father, and deep down as kind. I learned impossible before possible, which struck me as a surprising word when I did come to learn it. It opened a whole new world for me, but one that was maybe not quite so secure.

posted by william 4:00 PM
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