I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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, February 14, 2011

I remember that money and paper/books are both sacred (and somehow related, Lakshmi & Saraswati). I remember that when I was around five or six, I tore a ten rupee note while trying to stuff it into a piggy bank. This upset me terribly, not for the monetary loss (I had broken toys of greater value before), but because I thought it was sacrilege, worthy of divine punishment. I went into the prayer room and begged forgiveness. I think I glued together the note with cellophane tape, and didn't tell anyone -- not that anybody noticed. A few years later, I was made to stand on a piece of cardboard in school for some logistical reason. This was almost as bad -- I think I prayed all the time I was standing -- but I felt a little less culpable, perhaps because I was older, and because someone else made me do it.

(I'm pretty sure tearing a currency note wouldn't at all affect me spiritually now, but I'd still feel very uncomfortable about standing on paper for an extended time.)

posted by sravana 5:18 PM
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