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, October 04, 2006

I remember not knowing what an acorn was. Which is to say, being confused about what everyone else seemed to know--that acorns came from Oak trees (which ones were Oak trees?) and that the twirly-whirlies came from Maple trees. What were those really called, and why did acorns get to have a special name that everyone knew when the twirly-whirlies, which you could spin from a height (the top of a wall) to the ground like a helicopter or open and stick to your nose to become a rhinoceros, did not?

posted by Rosasharn 11:16 AM
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