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, February 21, 2007

I remember the amazing doll house my parents got my sister. I worked hard helping to put it together. The reason I remember it vividly is that one day my parents threatened her with dismantling it if she didn't behave. My father went off to bathe, and my sister started acting up again. I felt -- moralistic creep of an older brother that I was -- that I should make good on "our" adult threat. I started taking it apart. My father came into the room. He thought that I was fixing it for her, and smiled approval. But when I explained what I was doing (I think she was in tears and he thought I was helping her) he blew up. He threw my things on the ground, asking what I would think if he started breaking them. Unfortunately one of them broke the wall of my sister's doll house. I did manage to put it together again, though, so that it was pretty good. I think that the doll house we had on display later, with lots of cunning little furniture -- and curtains! -- was a different one. But I don't remember where it came from.

posted by william 3:31 PM
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