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, September 07, 2014
I remember first hearing about Jack the Ripper on a Time Tunnel episode.  I think they met him.  He didn't seem that scary, just as his nickname didn't.  After all, we ripped toilet paper and the like.  It seemed an innocuous moniker.  And Time Tunnel was sufficiently anodyne in its action that they didn't convey any terror.  I was surprised later on when "Jack the Ripper" became a watchword for terror -- for serial killed violence, during the Zodiac murders, for example.  Because I always associated him with Time Tunnel.


posted by William 1:11 PM
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