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

Saturday, October 26, 2013

I remember that I thought the words of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song, after "Oil, that is. Black gold," were "Texas T." I thought this because the "the bubblin' crude" you saw coming out of the ground was basically T-shaped, and that the idea was the T in Texas was oil. That made no sense, except as what characterized the state. Only recently did I hear the phrase "Texas tea" in some other context.

posted by William 12:09 PM
. . . 0 comments

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

I remember my surprise when I first realized that under the molded cardboard that held fruit -- apples, oranges, pears -- in the supermarket there were more layers of fruit; the fruit wasn't only displayed; some of it held up the cardboard cradling the other fruit. This was part of my general, intermittent surprise at things beneath the surfaces of the perceived world. This was interesting but sad. The world was not some eternal substrate supporting and guaranteeing its appearances, the face it showed us. It was as changeable and fragile and ephemeral frameless as its daily surfaces. What we saw wasn't based on anything more real - it was supported only by itself.

posted by William 9:13 AM
. . . 0 comments

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