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

Friday, May 06, 2011

I remember smells, but how can I say more than that? When presented with them, I remember the smell of leaves decaying and the smell of lilac and gardenia, of rubber erasers, of bike-chain oil, of copy machines and hot paper, of wet dog, of roses and of soil, the smell of a gerbill's cage, of clean wood shavings, of acquarium water, chlorine, pepper, lemon verbena (and other herbs/spices but the point is not to say how many), of diapers (infant and toddler) and of chicks that need their newspaper changed. I remember a lot of other outside smells I don't know the names of but that I walk into like a wall of past. I notice that this year, as every year, the viburnum spreads its scent over the whole garden, so that I have come to associate that flavor with the smelless muscarii, even though they contribute nothing to it--they just show up around the same time.

posted by Rosasharn 11:22 AM
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