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


Monday, June 17, 2013
I remember that good guys never shoot anyone in the back, no matter how evil they are. This surprIsed me when my parents told me: after all they were bad guys. But that's what distinguished the good guys: they didn't shoot people in the back. And as for the bad guys, the fact that they were running away establIshed them as cowards, which was as decisive a proof of defeat as losing a gun battle would be.


posted by William 11:58 AM
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1 comments


Saturday, June 01, 2013
I remember learning the phrase "change of life," and learning about the phenomenon of menopause, watching All in the Family, when Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton, RIP today) goes through it.


posted by William 6:40 PM
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0 comments




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