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

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Flutteringly I remember the feeling of being little. I remember my conviction that the most important work in the world was that of the ballerina, and that I could practice this work right at home, in my house, when my father played the piano. I remember that the impressive, grown up (teen aged) daughters of my mother's friend Kate danced, and I remember speaking to one of them on the phone and asking this question: What does your head do when you're dancing. Feet, toes, legs, arms, fingers, even shoulders seemed important to me. But what does the head have to do with it?

posted by Rosasharn 7:51 PM
. . . 0 comments

Thursday, February 06, 2014

I remember posting about Ralph Kiner (who died today) several times, early on in this list of memories. I remember being surprised when it turned out he'd been a superstar for the Pirates, rivals of the Mets. He was so much the quintessential Mets booster. I guess I thought of the announcers: Ralph Kiner, Lindsay Nelson, and Bob (?) Something as the benevolent parental figures observing and praising and critiquing what their team, our team, was doing on the field. Tom Seaver was a hero, and Gil Hodges was a demigod, father of the hero, but the three announcers were the genial judges of everything. And yet, it turned out, they'd been players. And not even for the Mets. Strange.

posted by William 8:23 PM
. . . 0 comments

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