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

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

I remember sleeping over and having friends sleep over. I remember sleeping at Nina's, especially at Rae's house in Lexington. I have so many different memories of sleepovers at that house, I don't know what order they go in: jumping on the beds; brewing toothpaste concoctions in Nina's powder room once the big bathroom renovation was done; swimming with mermaid toys in the big bathtub; eating ice cream; flying around the house in underoos and green felt slippers; eating melon chunks for snack (at my house we didn't really have snack); holding hands around the table and throwing kisses as grace; describing my family's six-week visit in Israel (in 1979) at dinner; playing hide and seek in the lower level (office); watching movies about horses; watching Nickelodeon (at my house we didn't have cable); listening to Rae read The Runaway Bunny, Frances, and Mercer Meyer books to us. I remember that sleepovers were so normal to me, so obviously what friends did at Rae's house, that when Celeste moved in (Nina and I were around four), I figured they were having a sleepover, too.

posted by Rosasharn 8:56 PM
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