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

Monday, November 03, 2008

I remember weddings I went to as a child--Phil and Stephanie's wedding, Ann and Moshe's wedding (in Miami), Maureen and Eldad's wedding. Phil and Stephanie's and Maureen and Eldad's I remember as loose colorful confetti memories--no shape, no strong images or narrative. Just color and the awareness that these are wedding memories. I do remember that Stephanie and Phil wore some very fancy traditional clothes from an Asian culture. Beautiful silk. I must have been older for Ann and Moshe's: I remember driving to Miami from my grandparent's house in Jacksonville; I remember a pool at the hotel and an old man asking my brother what kind of Jew he was (did he mean Orthodox or Conservative? Did he mean Ashkenazi or Sephardi--I don't know. I'm sure he was provoked into the question by my brother's payot (payis? long sidelocks)). Yossi didn't know what he meant, either, and said, "Just a Jew," which is always the right answer. He couldn't have been more than 5 at the time. I remember wearing a fancy dress (but which dress?) and my parents dressed up and a big hall with round tables and mood lighting and a wonderful band and dancing with my father. I remember being up late and eventually being put to bed (while my parents must have gone out or gone back to the wedding) in a room with an old couple who must have been sitters. I couldn't sleep, and they sat there watching one of those terrible (and boring) infomercials by CARE or a similar organization about starving children in a Third World country on TV. I also remember the very late drive back to Jacksonville, and how really cold it was, even in Florida.

posted by Rosasharn 10:21 PM
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