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

Thursday, December 13, 2007

I remember a snow day when my mother took us to sled on Pettee's hill. So many kids were there, swooping down that hill. A hill the shape of a normal distribution curve: such a long sharp way down, with a slow evening out to flat right there at the end. I couldn't believe it. How was this place set aside for sledding, for kids, and how did everyone know about it? Was this permanent or only on snow days? What was this hill for in summer? We sledded and sledded, flying down and trudging back up. It was so fun, I don't remember if I got snow in my boots. Then she pulled us up the hill of the end of Pleasant street, walking right up the middle of the road. Though there were almost no cars on the road, I felt scared and strange--so exposed in the middle of the road and so low to the ground, invisible and craning to see what was coming. The snow was so thick on the roads that there were deep ruts where tires had tried to move. It was hard going, walking, but a dream on a sled.

The two favorite things I loved best about childhood were: 1. The instantaneous alliances that play made possible with kids whose names you didn't even know. [When do adults make such alliances? Is this what one night stands are really about?] 2. The feeling of total belovedness brought on by unexpected permission and by hot cocoa.

posted by Rosasharn 9:50 AM
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