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, May 19, 2009

I remember playing on the Moshav with the Moshav kids. Because these memories are visceral rather than visual, I can't easily describe this; outside. Dry sun on dry blond dirt. Running up and down scrabbly hills. The smell of heat, but also the variegation of sun and shadow as it falls on your back and of speed and breath as we ran, found a hiding place, squeezed and stilled into it, ran again. There were teams, so alliances, secrets, the pleasure of coordination, instant kinship. The memory/ies are conflated: I am four. I am nine. I am a stranger, accepted. I am there with Miri, my friend to be from the Old City. The place is full of siblings and purity, yearning, sweet & genuine spirit, and song. I wonder if we got our Shabbos clothes dirty.

posted by Rosasharn 8:45 PM
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