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, October 23, 2006
I remember my friend Miri Midlo saying, "I'll come to you," when she meant, "I'll come to your house." I remember working out that she and all my Hebrish-speaking Anglo-Israeli friends must have imported their syntax from Hebrew: avo eilaikh. I remember knowing that this was not English, that it was wrong. And then I remember hearing myself say, "I'll come to you," when I meant, "I'll come to your house."


posted by Rosasharn 11:46 AM
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