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

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

I remember that when Jack D, Jonathan's father, picked us up to drive home from summer school at Cornell (before senior year of high school) there were two motorcycles in front of us on Route 17, both with couples on them, and he was very nervous driving behind them -- he thought that if they had any kind of accident he might kill them. I had been nervous too, watching them, but it was surprising to hear that he was nervous -- adult drivers in general seemed to me impressively serene as they drove.

posted by william 11:07 PM
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