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

Saturday, September 03, 2011

I remember when the big noisy "push-button-to-cross" boxes appeared on traffic light polea. They were very slow and noisy, and made me miss the slim elegance they displaced from the fluted lovely vertical columns. They seemed confused, like big dumb friendly animals. They'd pause to consider what you'd wanted (to cross!) for it seemed like forever, clicking and clucking. Then finally, as though shaking off some last vestige of a deep ursine nap, they'd make a sound like a metal cube turning over, and the light would change.

posted by William 1:51 PM
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