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

Friday, October 26, 2012

I remember being at the Daily Pint, post-beach/tapas/sangria. We start to talk about our families and favorite authors. We get paper towels from the bathroom so that we can more accurately make lists and draw family trees. We make lists of our favorite authors, my favorite thing to do. We draw a smiley face next to the authors on each others' lists we like. We disagree with some, mostly agree on others. We finish, and I remember folding the towel into my purse. He watches me do this, pauses, then he takes my hands, folds them in his, and asks me to come back to his house. Finally. There's no more endearing creature to me on the planet at the moment. He tells me his room is a mess, but if I give him five whole minutes, he'll give me a glass of wine, and tell me a story while he cleans room. I remember he looked at me with the most radiant jade-blue-green eyes I've ever seen and asked me want I wanted to do. That puddle on the floor? That's me.

posted by morgan 11:32 AM
. . . 0 comments

Monday, October 15, 2012

I remember "Milky Bar! Give me the power!" -- rhyming because of the free variant pronunciation of 'power' at that time (which doesn't seem to exist any more).

posted by sravana 2:52 PM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, October 13, 2012

I remember how to stop bouncing on a trampoline (by letting your knees bounce up to the same level as your hips or so).

posted by William 9:56 AM
. . . 0 comments

Saturday, October 06, 2012

I remember losing teeth: the somewhat disconcerting onset of shaking, the delicious crackling moment when the tooth became dislodged from the jaw, the fun of playing with it, the rearrangement of pressure and tongue movement and taste for the few days before it gave way. I was uncharacteristically careful with the last tooth, hoping to delay its fall, and succeeding for a couple of months: much as I was in a hurry to grow up, that tooth was a countdown to some sort of finality I wasn't prepared for. It fell in the middle of an English class -- grammar, not literature, because I remember who was teaching it: we had an unusual arrangement in 9th grade of having two different teachers for English -- and I had to ask for permission to go throw it out.

posted by sravana 12:55 AM
. . . 2 comments

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