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

Sunday, September 26, 2010

I remember a few sukkahs from my youth: the one on the top of a low part of the building where Bnai Jeshrun is housed, on 89th st. It was a sort of roof-top area which was usually closed, though I guess it was intended either for a garden or for kids to play handball. (I still think of that as a kind of intent, because I think of the city as an intended but natural place, that is intended for whatever uses it lent itself to.) I was impressed by the size and beauty of the Bnai Jeshrun one, though I don't think I ever ate in it or saw anyone do so. But sukkahs were few and far between in New York.

And I remember one that the Sterns family put up at their house. It had an esrog hanging, with lots of clove, and it smelled really wonderful. We did eat there, at least once. Geoffrey told me the esrog was the fruit that Eve and Adam ate, and it made me happy to have that grandly esoteric knowledge.

posted by William 12:12 AM
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