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 16, 2013

I remember chocolate covered ants. We were at the White Plains Chinese restaurant with the Schubins and I think Wendy told me about them, maybe for some gross-out purpose. I might have been already squeamish about the lobsters or crabs - we were waiting in the vestibule to sit down, so I might have seen some crustacea. I didn't believe her, but then I did, since that's not the sort of thing a person makes up. So in college, where chocolate covered ants inevitably come up, I knew about them, with the same familiarity reaching back seven or eight years or so as everyone else. I imagine everyone finds out about them, and realizes they have to be real after all, somewhere around age 10.

posted by William 8:19 AM
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