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

Thursday, December 21, 2006

I remember how the people who had authority in my cohort were the ones who were funniest (as long as they were in control of when they were funny). I remember onbe kid, a friend of a friend who didn't strike me immediately as charismatic, telling a joke on Riverside Drive about why Texans have pale thumbs. Well, he said, "It's a long story, son," hooking his thumbs onto his jacket. His timing was perfect, and I liked the sudden economy by which it turned out not to be a long story. I recognized the Texan gesture, either from Lyndon Johnson (or parodies of him), or from Yosemite Sam.

posted by william 11:24 AM
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