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, April 05, 2008

I remember the fascination with which I watched the horse in front of me, during group riding lessons, swat at horse flies with its tail. It did it in synch with its plodding. The flies landed on its rump in the same lazy rhythm. It was all standard and pleasantly phlegmatic. It was just a way of rattling through the environs, like sitting on a rocking chair on a back porch, but the porch was just unhurried life itself on a summer's day.

posted by william 12:57 PM
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