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

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

I remember being somewhat surprised that the verb "mind" could mean "object" or "find unpleasant." I think our family somehow didn't use the verb at all, so for me it was only a noun. But the Herings (I think) used the word -- I think someone asked if I minded something he was doing, or if I would mind. This is all in the dark backward and abysm of time, but I remember not understanding, and then understanding a few minutes later -- maybe he explained it? -- and being puzzled by it. I still am, a little. It's an interesting idiom,

posted by William 12:36 AM
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