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, July 28, 2011
I remember that matchboxes were the perfect sized containers for little handmade books.


posted by Rosasharn 9:49 AM
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Saturday, July 23, 2011
I remember how cool 35 millimeter film canisters were: first the metal ones, later the plastic. Good for pot, sure, but really it worked the other way: pot smokers were cool because so many of them were photographers, and had all these film canisters at hand.


posted by William 10:21 AM
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Monday, July 11, 2011
I remember that the shapes of Africa and South America fitting together led to the hypotheses about continental drift. I liked how a scientific theory could take its start from a simple, almost childlike observation like that.


posted by sravana 3:51 PM
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Saturday, July 09, 2011
I remember the Sports Illustrated cover that showed a smiling Willie Mays, about to drop his full-swing bat behind his back, and the words "Say Hey, 3000 Hits."


posted by William 4:49 PM
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Thursday, July 07, 2011
I remember my father trying to open a cellophane package that I'd failed at opening, using his teeth to try to rip it in the same frustrating, frustrated way we did.


posted by William 7:50 PM
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