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, February 25, 2012

I remember that whenever we needed a car, I'd walk with my father down to the Avis Rent-a-Car ("We try harder") on 77th St (I think) and Broadway. I liked that they tried harder, that they were the underdogs, always number 2, though according to one ad campaign number one and a half. One day they seem to have crossed the street: their office was now on the west side of Broadway, though that might have been temporary. At any rate it was here, on the west side of the street, that they were giving out buttons which just had the word (in Helvetica) "Henpecked?" I had no idea what it meant, couldn't parse it at all, though it seemed very funny, somehow. I articulated the last e as I tried to make sense of it. My father explained what it meant, but not what its morphemes were, so I didn't realize it was "hen" and "pecked." Of course I think of that scene, and that button, reading Byron now ("O you lords of ladies intellectual, / Do you not seen how they have henpecked you all?" - quoting from memory, in accordance with the rules I've given myself in this blog).

posted by William 8:56 PM
. . . 2 comments
Comments:
Interesting that you remember the typeface. I wonder if this is a visual rather than verbal memory because the word was unintelligible, at least initially.

# posted by Rosasharn : 4:53 PM

I think I remember button type-faces: they're part of the design. And I think you're right that not knowing the word gave me a visual memory of it. But also, of course, codices: I remember where the passage I'm looking for roughly is.

# posted by William : 10:00 AM

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