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

Thursday, January 07, 2010

I remember my cousin Cico, my mother's blood brother, who was a survivor and a lusty smoker and bon vivant, and a great athlete, could outrun me very easily (the only adult in my family who could). I think I only met him on one trip: I remember him diving into the Adriatic and also running the mile I always ran with me. He told me that there were 1582 meters to the mile, a slightly inaccurate stastic that I nevertheless keep using as my instinctive reference. I was about nine or ten when I met him (was I really running then? Maybe I met him again at twelve--no older thatn that. He died at about forty a year or two later of a heart attack. He had That adult European soccer-ball handling skill and exuberance too, I remember.

posted by William 5:47 PM
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