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, December 16, 2008

From Pauline Dawson:

I remember Mr Marshall, our primary school caretaker. He was grumpy but not creepy in any way. He made wooden toys in his workshop in the boiler room. He made me a wooden doll's cot for Christmas once. But the thing he made that I remember most was an artificial Christmas tree. Artificial trees were unheard of in New Zealand in those days (well where we lived anyway) and in true kiwi tradition it involved wood and Number 8 fencing wire (and a lot of silver tinsel). We had it for years growing up and it got very tatty but we all loved it. I have no idea what happened to it.

posted by william 6:52 PM
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