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, March 07, 2009
I remember that in the old, lighter green and yellow buses, the steering wheels were much more vertically oriented, the way they are in cars. In the newer, darker green buses, the pitch was much more horizontal, which made the bus drivers seem more godlike to me. They weren't confronting the wheel, face to face, as it were, but controlling it from above. I took pleasure in this constant reminder of progress.


posted by william 11:52 PM
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http://books.google.com/books?id=ZtPdugUKVMkC&printsec=frontcover
 

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