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

Monday, January 22, 2018

I remember a science kit we had, or maybe just a booklet of experiments you could do at home, that demonstrated surface tension by having you roll a needle off a fork on to the surface of a cup of water. The needle would float, or seem to! I knew that it should sink like a stone, but there it was, on the surface. Somehow the danger of a floating needle got transferred to the surface tension of the water itself, as though it could prick you with some strange surface needle at any moment.

posted by William 12:35 AM
. . . 0 comments

Friday, January 19, 2018

I remember when we read a little Chaucer in English class in eleventh grade. Mr. McCormick noted that the Wife of Bath was gat-toothed, and explained that that meant "gap-toothed," that she had a gap between her two front teeth. I remember that Mr. McCormick's daughter Hannah had a gap between her two front teeth, and that we all thought this was appropriate and that he must have liked the connection with Chaucer.

posted by William 4:14 PM
. . . 0 comments

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