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

Saturday, September 11, 2010

I remember in seventh grade English the high-spirited Peter Rogers talking to our teacher about the Neapolitan flick of the fingers outwards from under the chin. Our teacher was mock-scandalized at Peter; we were puzzled and interested, so Mr. Donahue (or was it Mr. Baruch?) explained that the gesture ("never do it in Naples if you value your life!") meant "Nuts to you!" I'd never heard that phrase before either. But it really didn't seem so bad. And it was interesting to learn two new insults simultaneously, each somehow explaining the other.

posted by William 10:00 AM
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