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 29, 2006

I remember the needle on my light meter (in my Honeywell Pentax). I remember that if I wasn't sure that it was working right, that the batteries were working, I could radically decrease the f-stop or the shutter speed, and then the needle would shoot down towards the minus sign in the view-finder, like a gull striking a fish. When the camera was off the needle would be just below the acceptable range, so I really noticed when it jerked downward so hard. It moved like something living, and it did so to tell me about the difference between the light I could see and the light it could record. Its message was urgent and eager. We were in it together.

posted by william 11:13 PM
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