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, October 27, 2006

I remember spending the week with Nina and Yossi at Rae and Celeste's house in Lexington while my parents packed up our Cambridge house and moved us to Sharon. I remember some level of jumping on beds, pillow fighting, but I may be mixing memories; I spent such a lot of sleepovers there. In general, I was happy enough to be with my best friend (Nina), and I didn't mind having my brother along too much. But by the week's end, I longed for my mother, and I remember one telephone call with her, telling her how much I missed her, crying, asking why she hadn't called me more often. As best as I can make out, she'd figured that if she spoke to me less, I wouldn't think of her as much, wouldn't miss her as badly. During that phone call, somehow it came up that they had seen Tootsie, and that it was not an appropriate movie for children.

posted by Rosasharn 10:53 AM
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