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

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

I remember that once I picked up the phone the instant it rang and there was no connection. I told my father, and he said you should never pick up the phone on the first ring. This didn't quite make sense (though for him it was a completely internalized and therefore obvious rule) but after that I never did -- not until the cell phone came in. At the time the ruled seemed to be about making sure the connection was established -- that the phone company had confirmed that the call was going through. This seemed confirmed by the fact that sometimes people would say that they hadn't heard any ringing when I picked up even after one full ring. (Now I think that probably if you picked up too early the other person wouldn't hear any ringing at all and would hang up.)

posted by William 11:21 AM
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