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, May 19, 2007

I remember that the adults -- my parents and grandparents -- got to carry around umbrellas when it rained. I had to wear my yellow raincoat and hat, but umbrellas (like those nylon beach chaises-longues) were an adult accessory only. I remember it was slightly mysterious to me how they opened and shut, and also the kind of conclave they made outside our front door in the hallway when my grandparents visited on a rainy day, opened to dry and tilted at a 30 degree angle, inscrutable but friendly in the way they waited there with their perfect posture and deportment, clustered serenely around the entrance mat, part of adult knowledge and practice. The rain was part of what I thought of as city life (unlike the parks and playgrounds) -- the life of offices and taxis and business phone calls and mail and checks -- that was my parents' other life and expertise, and the umbrellas were, like the adults and their clients and partners, also calmly expert in conducting that life, the life of the rain.

posted by william 9:14 AM
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