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

Thursday, March 22, 2007

I remember that when plastic "gems" in gum-machine rings came out of their bands, there was some odd adhesive that would stick to the bottom of the gem, and that sometimes paper would adhere to it from the setting. But the ring was plastic, so it was surprising that there was this kind of glossy double-ply paper in the setting. I always felt a need to scratch it off, both gem and setting.

posted by william 6:29 PM
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