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


Saturday, March 17, 2007
I remember what I think was a Fabregé commercial, based on the song "Caberet." "And for the men / There's the great smell of Brut!...Come to the Fabregé, my friends / Come to the Fabregé." I'm pretty sure this was a department store, because when I found out about Fabregé eggs later, I was puzzled by them -- why should the Romanovs have them? Why should they be so awe-inspiringly rare and valuable?


posted by william 8:53 AM
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