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, May 30, 2008

I remember pictures of the tanks entering Prague ("because the Czechs asked for the fraternal aid of their Soviet counterparts"), and later of the defeated Alexander Dubcek on a bus in Prague, strap-hanging and talking to the other passengers. Or was this a picture of him before defeat, but published after? I didn't know what to think, but my parents didn't seem too surprised by any of it.

posted by william 12:35 AM
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