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


Thursday, April 07, 2011
I remember the wooden cuckoo clock that someone (who?) got us from Switzerland. Switzerland! My brother and I were in love with it, and it was put in our room. But it got annoying quickly, not just the frequent sounds, but because it had to be wound up every 12 hours, and the pendulum had a tendency to get stuck. Then, we had to adjust the time, and the cuckoo would pop out every time it hit the hour as we were turning the hands.


posted by sravana 1:14 PM
. . .
0 comments
Comments:

Post a Comment





. . .