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 07, 2007

I remember coveting those of my mother's paintings that were in my grandparents' (and other relatives'?) houses. I felt they were the nicer ones, and the places they were hung didn't deserve them as much as we did. I remember finding a couple of watercolours of horses hidden in a closet at my grandparents', and being puzzled that my mother was dissatisfied with them because they seemed beautiful to me. I took to secretly drawing crayon horses for some time. I remember, too, finding a large stack of my parents' wedding invitations and using the blank sides to draw on -- I liked the thickness and the compact, postcard-ish shape.

posted by sravana 2:55 AM
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