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, November 03, 2010

I remember Angela. I learned the phrase, "Tuck in," at her huge round laden dining room table in Dursley. Her kitchen had a wall of copper pots—or I've produced them, for she was the sort of cook who would have a wall of copper pots. Her nails were always perfectly manicured, red. She had auburn hair, a wide mouth, good teeth, and smile wrinkles around her eyes. She was tall and slim and impressive and self-assured. She loved her dogs, big Airedales with names like Poppy. She was the kind of woman who could make smoking seem elegant, a long-fingered activity. In part thanks to her smoking, she had a sexy, deepish voice, and in no way related to the smoking, she had a refined accent and a languorous way of speaking: she would never rush, but when she reached a pronouncement, it sounded remarkably decisive. She volunteered in the open prison system. I first met her at a marathon card-playing session during my first visit to Steve's home in January of 1997; somehow the feeling I got was that that was Steve's family—Audrey & Arnold, Tracey & her husband, and Ian & his first wife Maggie, and Tony & Angela.

posted by Rosasharn 9:40 PM
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