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, February 12, 2011

I remember my mother saying it was fine to leave our money on the table with the bill when we ate at a Chinese restaurant once. I assumed everyone was always suspicious of each other, and so of us, and most of me. In stores I tried not to look like the shoplifter I was sure they suspected me of being. But my parents didn't seem sensitive to others' suspicions, an insensitivity I was mildly embarrassed about. I always made sure to tell the ticket-taker at the movies that my father had all our tickets, as though this was a foible of his. They never seemed surprised, though. They'd dealt with other fathers, it was clear.

posted by William 3:26 PM
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