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


Tuesday, March 03, 2015
I remember my first significant professional engagement in litigation.  I was defending three people in a civil action stemming from a business dispute between partners. I was a young lawyer without litigation experience facing a former assistant district attorney representing the plaintiff, and I was terrified. We were at a court conference which my husband, Stephen, attended  as the accountant for one of the defendants. When we all left the courthouse my opponent  handed Stephen a document written in longhand in the course of the conference bearing the title "Suppena." That did a good deal to relieve my anxiety.


posted by alma 1:05 PM
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