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, September 29, 2009

I remember that my father was master of lightbulbs and extension cords and door knobs. There were three bulbs in the fixture in my room, and I barely noticed it if one went out; and when two went out I got used to the dim dinginess pretty quickly. But my father would come with the step-ladder and change the bulbs, and then the room would flood with light. Extension cords were earlier: when he showed home movies he'd have to set up the screen at the end of the living room, and get out the projector to put on a little end table, and run an extension cord from the projector to the wall behind the lamps. I was always told to be careful around that extension cord. We didn't put it under a throw rug because they thought (especially my mother) that that would be a fire hazard. And I remember that my father would sometimes come holding an incongruously small screw driver in his large hands to tighten the screws that held the door knobs in place.

posted by William 12:12 PM
. . . 1 comments
Comments:
That wire shocked me!
I was setting up the projector ( I was about 8) and plugged it in. The threaded wraping had frayed and when I plugged it in all the lights in the apartment dimmed and the dishwasher slowed. I felt the dull pull of the current through my hands and instinctivly pulled back unplugging it.

# posted by caroline : 7:51 AM

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