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

Sunday, May 03, 2026

I remember my mother telling me when I was four or so that things farther away looked smaller. (I remember that this was the discovery she conveyed: not that things looked smaller when they were farther away but that things farther away looked smaller.) I'd never put these two ideas of spatiality together before, and I was very struck by the truth of this sudden revelation.

posted by William 4:47 PM
. . . 0 comments

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