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, June 25, 2019
I remember my father ordering something from the Government Printing Office.  (I believe it was a poster of some sort, and I believe it was for me, but I have only the dimmest memory of what it would have been.)  That made me notice that he got lots of mail from the Government Printing Office, and I was very impressed by him, very impressed that the Government Printing Office looked on him as a worthy correspondent and peer.


posted by William 12:06 AM
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