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

Sunday, February 24, 2008

I remember that my uptown grandparents used to put sugar into their cups before adding the coffee. When she served coffee at my grandfather's bridge games I remember her as asking people if they wanted sugar before pouring the coffee. She'd put the sugar in first, then give them their cups and pour the coffee in over it while they held them. My father always added sugar to the coffee, and I've never seen anyone do it my grandmother's way since, but I was reminded of this by a moment in Peter Rushforth's novel Pinkerton's Sister (set in 1903) where someone puts in the sugar first.

posted by william 9:31 PM
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