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, December 11, 2021

I remember meeting my father at the club where he played tennis. I was always a bit shy seeing that side of him. There was the carefree way he and his friends laughed and played that wasn’t so different from the way I played with my friends after all, and I felt both relief and a bit of unease that a part of childhood persisted in him. And I remember the nonchalant ease with which he picked up the ball with his racket, a skill that was more even more cool and impressive to me than playing tennis.

posted by sravana 3:15 PM
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