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

Thursday, March 31, 2011

I remember my mother's shoes. Tons and tons of them in her closet. I somehow recognized them as pairing the way my own shoes did. I think maybe that's a huge developmental moment, the moment when you recognize that shoes come in pairs. (I remember learning that socks could go on either foot. This after the hard lesson that shoes had to go on the right foot!) Women's shoes also paired up, despite their exoticism. I liked that, somehow.

posted by William 11:29 PM
. . . 0 comments

Monday, March 28, 2011

I remember learning to type: asdfg hjkl; In bed for much of 1985, recovering from one laser surgery after another, I sat with a tray and an old manual typewriter on my lap and practiced drills off a library book. asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; The dry cramped experience I hated most bitterly: meaningless repetition of meaningless marks--no plot, no character, no rise or fall beyond my clumsy, disobedient fingers. No one forced me. That book was my own hateful choice, trapped for all those loathsome blank weeks, asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl;

posted by Rosasharn 8:35 PM
. . . 0 comments

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

I remember the first time I saw a photo of Elizabeth Taylor, in Life Magazine, and how struck I was by how much like my mother she looked. She was forty, I think? They both were. (I once mentioned their resemblance by-the-bye, eight years ago.) I still don't know whether I thought she was beautiful because she looked like my mother, or whether I thought my mother was beautiful because she was styled like Elizabeth Taylor.

posted by William 11:26 AM
. . . 0 comments

Sunday, March 20, 2011

I remember from the biography of Houdini that I read in fifth grade that he could stay under ice-covered water for an hour or so by pressing his nose against the rough bottom surface of the ice and breathing the air trapped there.

posted by William 2:17 PM
. . . 0 comments

Monday, March 14, 2011

I remember the menacing words "Three Mile Island."

posted by Rosasharn 9:49 PM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, March 05, 2011

I remember watching the Camp David Accords with my father on TV. It must have been Indian summer, because I remember that it was hot in our house, and my father was wearing his undershirt with no shirt over. Still, the men were outside, wearing suits.

posted by Rosasharn 10:17 PM
. . . 0 comments

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

I remember rubber pants. They were itchy and uncomfortable, and poorly fitted, and often leaky.

posted by Rosasharn 10:12 PM
. . . 0 comments

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