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

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

I remember Geiger counters, from Superman, and I think also The Time Tunnel. They seemed very cool -- the way they clicked and the needle jumped. Then as a junior in an NSF high school summer program we actually used them. It was like the entry into the fantasy world of TV. But I could measure my approach towards adulthood by the fact that I could also see them as reasonably routine. Like (years earlier) routinely plugging things in, an activity once strictly and glamorously forbidden (I idiotically also held some radioactive material up to my throat the day we were introduced to Geiger counters, clowning around. I was immortal then. I'm pretty sure the radiation was insignificant.)

posted by william 9:50 AM
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