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, January 04, 2014

I remember S&H green stamps. (Or were they S&H Green stamps; anyway, they were pale green perforated stamps and my mother pasted long strips of them into booklets.)

One winter day, when I must have been four or five, because we still lived in DC then, my mother took me on errand to redeem the S&H booklets. On the way, on the sidewalk, a man said "Happy New Year" to my mother, and she returned the greeting.

I was amazed; how did they know to say that? how did they both know to say that? I asked her if she knew him. She said she didn't. That ruled out conspiracy.

Possibly the conversation went on--my questions, her answers--but if so, it was probably about the holiday, and not about the fascinating thing, how they knew what to say.

(I can't shake an awareness of how this scene would play in a novel or film. Which would be, of course, yes, she knows the putative stranger, and only the child doesn't know that it's asking the right question. But this was about something else.)

posted by Carceraglio 3:14 PM
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