Saturday, April 12, 2008

The Stories of Our Lives (in six words)

It's been a while since I've been tagged for anything, but Steve Caratzas has obliged with the following challenge:

1) Write your own six word memoir
2) Post it on your blog; include a visual illustration if you’d like
3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible
4) Tag at least five more blogs with links
5) Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I read "original post" as the one that started this meme - The Beginning of All Beginnings - so I departed from Caratzas Station and headed out into the wilds of cyberspace (do we still use that term?), trying to discover the Meme Creator.

A moderately interesting experience. Here are the way stations and stories I encountered on my journey:

The Blog of Lewd Enlightenment: And the lemon flower is sweet.

pony rides and monkey pictures: Never give up. Never surrender...mostly. [A Galaxy Quest fan. Nice.]

Conspiracy of Happiness
: Graduated finally; spent life in love.

Damn Kids, Get Off My Lawn!: MISSION: HAVE CAKE, EAT IT TOO.

meanoldmommy: "Heaven for climate, hell for company".

No Internal Editor: Slowly realizing we will be okay. [I like that one.]

The road bogged down at the next blog, where I couldn't easily find the meme. Also, it occurred to me (I'm a bit slow - and I suppose I was intrigued by the journey itself) that no one was posting to some All-Powerful, All-Knowing "Original Post." The Meme Creator would remain shrouded in mystery, without form, and void, with darkness on the face of the deep. No identifiable point of the Big Blog Bang.

Six degrees of separation also seemed enough.

The six-word memoir started as a contest at the online magazine SMITH and has blossomed now into a best-selling book of mini-memoirs entitled, Not Quite What I Was Planning. A few issues back, The New Yorker offered an appropriately brief article on the subject by Lizzie Widdicombe: "Say It All in Six Words."

How to encapsulate a life in only six words? And what tone to set? Glib? Overly serious? There are so many possibilities. Wherever you go, there you are. But that's not original. Not quite what I was planning seems hard to beat, but it's already taken. That's it? You've gotta be kidding! Nine words strategically condensed into six. I like it - but I'm not sure it's really my story.

I'll go with: Wandering down a long dirt road.

Overly serious. Oh well.

And only I could go on too long about the topic of brevity.

I tag the following: Liam, Jeff, Crystal, Jen, and Enrique.

9 comments:

crystal said...

Thanks for the tag. And thanks for doing the backtracking - the origins are interesting.

Wandering down a long dirt road.

That's a tough one to beat.

Anonymous said...

Still Dancing with the amplified wires.

David E

Liam said...

Actually I commented on someone else's blog on the same subject, and my six words were: "Teaching, dissertation, teaching, dissertation, teaching, dissertation." I'll try to come up with a wider view of things.

cowboyangel said...

Crystal,

Yours turned out fine.

Dave,

That's a great one. Though I want to know if that's a tango or a two-step you're doing with the wires.

Liam,

You mean the idea wasn't original? Sigh . . . .

Your story is a sad but not unexpected one. I am concerned that you didn't squeeze "beer" somewhere into the narrative. On the other hand, I guess that means I won't have to worry about buying you that pitcher of Brooklyn Lager I owe you. :-)

Anonymous said...

William

All of the above and the between as well. A musician without diversity is no musician to me.

David E (cha cha cha!)two,three,four

Garpu said...

Still thinking about this. It's hard to choose the right six words.

Garpu said...

OK. Got mine and posted about it. "Ugly code makes Baby Jesus cry."

cowboyangel said...

Garpu - That's hilarious.

crystal said...

Thanks for the comment on the Borges poem - I'm in delete mode.