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, August 10, 2014

I remember night terrors, my fear late at night of the outside, of the woods behind my house, of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster, names I knew because WGBH sometimes previewed NOVA programs about them. Undoubtedly those shows debunked the monster myths, but the previews did not, and they were all I encountered. I remember that the upstairs bathroom window was always cracked about two inches, summer or winter, and the light -- at least a night light -- was always on in there. So the one room with light was the room with an open window, facing the forest.

posted by Rosasharn 2:17 AM
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