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 08, 2007

I remember that at my junior high school there was a group that I wanted to get into (as though I was a late-comer to the school; but I wasn't -- maybe they'd all gone to elementary school together?) and they were all amused by the existence of the "yellow bellied sapsucker." That was the first I heard of it. Their knowledge of this risquee and amusing bird name was part of their cohesion as a group.

posted by william 7:44 PM
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