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

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

I remember the phone system at Columbia. I remember knowing how to do amazing feats of voicemail acrobatics from anywhere on campus. I remember recording myself singing The Obvious Child and sending it to my friends' mailboxes during finals sophomore year. "And in remembering a road sign / I am remembering a girl when I was young / And we said, these songs are true, these days are ours, these tears are free / The cross is in the ball park—the cross is in the ball park." I must have re-recorded it six times, and now that I think think about it, I wonder if I chickened out or finally sent one. I hope I did.

posted by Rosasharn 11:39 PM
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