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

Monday, January 15, 2007

I remember my (uptown) grandfather would always push the antenna down on his car after he parked it (I liked pushing it down and also pulling it up, that thumbnail experience under the button to begin prying it loose). Lots of antennae in their neighborhood were broken off. My grandmother explained that teenagers would break them off in order to fence with each other on the streets. This seemed pretty cool, since we only fenced with sticks, but a little scary, verging on the possibility of really getting hurt. But I liked the idea that all the stubs and occasional wire hangers stood for a kind of energetic fun still in my future.

posted by william 8:30 AM
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