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

Monday, May 28, 2007

I remember the colorful gypsy cabs that used to cruise in New York. Like yellow cabs, they had prices stenciled on their doors, but they were different colors -- green and purple pre-eminently. I didn't know they were different from yellow cabs until I was old enough to take cabs. By then I'd read that they were dangerous and uninsured (and also that it was illegal for any car registered in New York but a licensed taxi to be painted yellow). They were livery, but not allowed to cruise for fares, which of course they did. I took them once in a while, though by then, as well, they were scarcer than they had been. The only time I really remember taking one, I was surprised by how dilapidated the swaying back seat was. The cab had a meter that didn't work. Yellow cabs had just started putting partitions up between passengers and driver; the gypsy cabs hadn't done that.

posted by william 11:27 PM
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