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

Sunday, September 11, 2011

I remember what everyone remembers: how blue the sky was on September 11. I remember what everyone remembers: a screen that showed a plane hitting a tower, a screen showing a tower falling. I remember what everyone remembers: two kinds of bewildered confusion—one from before we understood that the plane hit on purpose, and another after. I remember what everyone remembers: the sense that this had happened to me and that this grief belonged to each and all of us, and that everything was now different. But I also remember distrusting that last feeling—how could this be true, any more than it is always true—especially if we had to discuss at length whether to cancel Shakespeare class that afternoon. I remember feeling hinge-less and very afraid, and I remember that the movements of my fetus, my daughter-to-be, soothed and rocked me to sleep.

posted by Rosasharn 9:15 AM
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