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

Thursday, December 11, 2014

I remember other people's homes. The houses of most of our relatives, even the distant ones, and even accounting for wealth differences, felt similar to ours. But there were distinctive elements in, say, my Christian friends' houses with the smell of baked goods and pets that were allowed on furniture, or the Brahmin ones, with religious artifacts in the living room, or North Indian homes where Hindi bounced off the walls. And there were other intangible features that I can't pinpoint -- at any rate, it was fascinating and a little bit intimidating; I was usually a bit relieved to return home.

posted by sravana 7:25 PM
. . . 0 comments

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