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

Friday, February 15, 2008

I remember oil rags. Whenever we filled up they'd check the oil, pulling out the dip-stick and wiping it down. The ritual was so interesting to me: remove, wipe, reinsert, remove, examine. We never got oil that I remember. I didn't know why they did it this way, or in fact what they were doing. But I do remember that they'd whip the rag out to wipe the dipstick down, and I thought there was something special about those rags. They had for me the enigmatic and wonderful status of Tools for the performance of activities we would never do or know how to do. Soldering irons weren't a patch on them. They were implements of a mystery.

posted by william 6:52 AM
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