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


Wednesday, May 02, 2007
I remember
posting about the Claremont stables almost five years to the day before they closed last Sunday. It was fun to be in that cavernous space in New York, in a building that otherwise looked ordinary. But inside was a paddock filled with dirt, and horses, and hay, and light coming in, caught by dust that seemed very old. Now it's gone.


posted by william 10:57 PM
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