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

Thursday, May 24, 2012

I remember the regular shock of things not turning out right. I remember, for instance, accepting the not-red construction-paper butterfly wings for the Siddur Party in first grade: It wasn't a big deal, because, I figured, I would simply color them red with crayons. Color as I might, they never became red, and I was so sorry, so disappointed--wings marred by irregular scribbles, nothing like the red and lovely adornments I wanted. I remember drawing figures--heads, bodies, hair, arms, hands, legs, feet, belly-buttons--all the parts that I knew a person ought to have, in the shapes I knew those parts to be--or flowers, with green leaves and petals in lovely colors--or houses with rectangular windows and steps and a chimney--none of which came out the way they ought to: they looked like a child's drawing, nothing like the beautiful things that I saw in my mind.

posted by Rosasharn 4:48 PM
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