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, November 30, 2010
I remember brushing my teeth with Nina at Chris's house. We could not have been more than 4 or 5. I don't know when he moved to Lexington, but it was before we were in first grade, and this was at the apartment before that--in Watertown maybe? I remember debating the merits of a variety of toothbrush strokes: side-to-side and up-and-down seemed to make sense, but we had heard that they just moved the bits around. Circles were supposed to be better, but why?


posted by Rosasharn 11:20 PM
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