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

Monday, August 05, 2013

I remember buying books for the school year, and my mother and I spending an afternoon covering them with brown laminated paper on the floor of my room. I remember the fun of picking out sticker name labels for the books, the interest in which waned as I got older, but feeling that I had to hold on to it as a matter of tradition. I remember later covering my brother's books with him. I remember the excitement of looking through the textbooks, and staying up too late before the first day of school reading stories from the English texts.

posted by sravana 1:19 AM
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