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, July 06, 2010

I remember that (except on leap years) today's date will occur one day in the week later next year (because 365 is 1 (mod 7)). I remember how useful this was for figuring out when old birthdays were. I was born on a Wednesday, so I was 1 on a Thursday, 2 on a Friday, 3 on a Saturday and (leap year!) 4 on a Monday. I also remember listening to the Pirates of Penzance a lot, or maybe it was a compendium of Gilbert and Sullivan songs, and the "most ingenious paradox" that made the February 29th baby into someone who had only had five birthdays when he was twenty-one years old.

posted by William 11:49 PM
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