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

Friday, September 11, 2009

I remember sitting in a no-parking zone and hearing about the attacks on the phone from Lisa P. who said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought: no big deal because I remembered that a plane had hit the Empire State Building in the forties, with I think only two casualties. But I turned on the radio just in time to hear the radio correspondent from Washington yell that a plane had just slammed into the Pentagon, and suddenly I was really appalled and worried. That night I watched the Golf Channel for hours.

posted by William 3:30 PM
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