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

Monday, January 24, 2011

I remember being fascinated by physical constants -- that you could attach a number to an object or process, and that the number was essentially unchanging in space and time. Where in the universe did these numbers come from? Even more wonderful were constants that were limits, like the speed of light or absolute zero. It was strange enough that things like light and temperature were bounded, but that we could also put a number on those bounds seemed crazy.

posted by sravana 7:00 PM
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