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

Saturday, March 09, 2019

I remember that sometimes my uptown grandparents -- when my downtown grandparents were sill on speaking terms with them -- would get rye bread for dinner when the downtowners came over, and that the rye bread they got was much better than the rye bread my downtown grandparents got for themselves, bakery, not bakery-section. We never had rye at home, though sometimes I would get it at a restaurant -- my favorite sandwich being a BLT on rye, but not rye toast (which my father always wanted me to try).

posted by William 2:15 PM
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