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

Sunday, March 04, 2007

I remember noticing that my grandparents and great-grandparents pulled the bedcovers over their heads when sleeping. My parents didn't, so I took that as a characteristic of old age. I also worried for their breathing, and told my mother to tell my great-grandfather not to do it. She made me tell him myself, reasoning that he would be more likely to take a child's advice seriously (I suppose out of indulgence). I was sure it would be the opposite (and it was).

posted by sravana 1:39 AM
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