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

Saturday, April 07, 2007

I remember being very puzzled that the little hand stood for hours, which were so much longer than minutes. Why should the big hand stand for the shorter time and the little for the longer? And then my father and his father had watches with second hands, which were longer still (I noticed later, maybe years later).

(Why? Maybe because when you're little time moves like the hour hand, and when you're big it moves like the minute hand, and when your life is very long it moves like the second hand. Helas.)

posted by william 8:30 AM
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