Telling, and Telling, and Telling

When Augustine of Hippo was beatified he was not yet known as the father of the memoir. His contributions to the modern Church led to his sainthood, while his decision to title his book about his early life Confessions has led to our present-day glut of tell-all non-fiction. Because of St. Augustine, the generic requirements of the memoir are a descent into chaos or dissolution followed by an epiphany that leads to life being turned around and righted. Sometimes the protagonist triumphs over adversity, sometimes over his or her own self-created demons. Either way, the progression is time and again toward a happy ending.

What to do, though, if one is a serial memoirist? How many conversions can one have in one's life, after all? Augusten Burroughs solves this problem by going over the same material over and over again, hacking away at it from slightly different angles. So does Mary Knarr. Elizabeth Wurtzel solves the dilemma by developing various addictions and psychological problems. Another option is to come up with a gimmick and then write about the ways that gimmick changed one's life: have zero environmental impact for a year and write about it, live strictly according to the Bible for a year and write about it, etc.

Once upon a time, a woman droned in a cubicle in lower Manhattan feeling bored and adrift. She like to cook, though, and had heard of this new thing called blogging, so she decided to spend a year cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writing about it, and about her life. The end result was first a popular blog, then an entertaining book, then a movie starring Merryl Streep, and finally a book contract for more memoirs. Cleaving, Julia Powell's new work, is the result of the new career engendered by the success of her blogging experiment.

It's a book about butchering, both literally and metaphorically. Having completely butchered her marriage by entering into an obsessive affair, Powell decides to hide from the complications of her life, and perhaps work out some aggression, by apprenticing as a butcher in a Catskills meat shop. The book describes her years of butchery with intense honesty, not only about the feel and smell of meat and the techniques involved in preparing it for the grill or oven or pan, but also about her sexual proclivities and indiscretions. Confessions, indeed.

Julie and Julia was an entertaining read because of its breezy insouciance, because of Powell's ability to at once take her task seriously and with a grain (or pinch) of salt. Cleaving, on the other hand, is full of high seriousness. Meat cleaves to bone as we sometimes cleave to one another, and the only solution is to become expert at wielding a cleaver, breaking down carcasses and breaking our own and each others hearts. Relationships, marriages, are hard, no matter how much we love and are committed to each other. This is old news. Infidelity makes things harder, and can be something we learn from that brings us closer or can be something that tears us apart.

Powell is great at describing her obsession with her lover, her need for him, and at the same time her love for her husband. She is great at describing the pain this causes everyone involved. She is great at chroniciling the fevered time of chaos and loss. She's not so great at resolution, perhaps because her career as a serial memoirist requires a sequel, maybe a year spent at a processing plant to help her, you know, process. We end this installment with her still with her husband, but with her still pining for her lover, and with her husband still seeing the woman he began seeing while she was cheating on him. She claims a certain amount of happiness, but maybe it's just resignation.

In other words, Cleaving feels incomplete. It captures the descent, but not the phoenix-like rise from the ashes. It reads like a confession told not because the events led to a new understanding, but simply from a desire to confess. Although the experience of writing the book was undoubtedly cathartic for Powell, there isn't much in it for anyone else. Except, of course, some recipes, and a new understanding of why tenderloin is overpriced.

Regularly Scheduled Programming

I must have been as excited about it as everyone else. After all, a cardboard model of the lunar module, some give-away from the gas station, hung from the light over my bed so that I could fall asleep gazing up at it. I remember helping my father put it together, by which I mean watching my father put it together while I jumped up and down. My favorite toys were space toys: Matt Mason figures, the Colorforms outer space men, one from each planet. I must have been excited the week of the moon shot, but 40 years later that's not what I remember.

What I remember is being sick of it before it happened. This was the first event of my life that featured nonstop television coverage, and the first event of my life that I experienced entirely through television, and although I wanted to watch the landing and walk on the moon, I was completely confused by the pre-emption of all my cherished programs for four straight days. They left Earth on Thursday, July 16. I didn't realize beforehand that going to the moon would mean missing two days of Dark Shadows and almost an entire Saturday of cartoons. By Sunday I just wanted them to get there already and get it over with so that my 5 year-old life could get back to normal.

I must have been alseep by the time the Eagle landed Sunday night. My father got me up to watch Neil Armstrong descend from the module. I know I saw the whole thing live, but what I remember is not Armstrong's famous words but Walter Cronkite, so excited I thought he was maybe about to cry. Walter Cronkite, taking off his glasses and saying, "Oh boy!" Forty years later the lesson I remember is not about technology and aspiration and innovation and greatness but instead that the way we know what is important is because not only our fathers but the TV tells us so. Even half-asleep I knew that if Walter Cronkite was moved, I should be moved.

Events with far-reaching implications swirled around that moon weekend. I have no memory of any of them. No memory of Vietnam, probably because my extended family contained no draft-age men. Woodstock several weeks later meant nothing. My mother was 39, my father 46. They listened to show tunes. There was no counterculture in my household. While the astronauts frolicked and planted a flag my mother was realizing that she was pregnant with my sister, another thing I knew nothing about at the time. All I knew, as my father lifted me in his arms to carry me back to bed, was that this particular event had finally transpired, and that the next day Dark Shadows would resume its regularly scheduled programming.

My First Inaugural

No, I'm not in DC today braving the cold and the crowds. I'm here at home, where I can DVR the processions, skip ahead to the actual swearing-in and speech at my leisure, and stay warm all day. That's fine with me. I've actually attended an inauguration before, and while it was interesting, once was enough for this lifetime.

A friend in college had a father who was some sort of lawyer who did something or other for the Republican party. I don't know if he donated, fundraised, or defended them, but at any rate he had some sort of pull. She had tickets to Reagan's second inaugural, it was Winter Term and I was sitting around working on my honors project, so with nothing better to do I went up to DC to attend with her and another college friend.

Whatever her father did left us with pretty good "seats" for the swearing-in, but because it was freezing the outdoor events were moved indoors and the ceremony took place in the Capitol rotunda. Our good "seats" were in a rented space with free food and drinks and monitors to watch the proceedings. That was fine with me. It really was freezing. After about 15 minutes milling about with the others gathered in the banquet hall, it became clear that I was surrounded by....people who had voted for Reagan. In November, 1984 I cast the first ballot of my life, for Mondale/Ferraro. Yes, I was one of the five Pennsylvanians who voted Democratic that year. "If not us, who? If not now, when?" blah, blah, blah. The neatly dressed crowed went wild. I had another drink. He kept talking about freezing government spending so that everyone becomes more responsible or some other such nonsense. I kept drinking and kept my mouth shut.

After the open bar closed it was time to go back to Alexandria, take a long nap, and get ready for the ball. That's right, I even got to attend an inaugural ball. My friend's parents were attending one of the big balls, where Reagan himself would appear for a few minutes, but we had tickets to one of the lesser state balls, probably Virginia's since that's where her father lived. The ball had some name, but I don't remember it. Here's what you do at an inaugural ball when you're 21 years old and have nothing at stake: you dance to Motown and get incredibly drunk. Andrew Jackson's celebration featured a mob of his "common" supporters storming the White House for free punch. The Republican equivalent of this is young women in pearls and young men who look like they should be in the military, but are not, drinking up everything at the open bar. When the ball is over you and your friends and some random young legislative aides head down to Georgetown and drink some more. When the bars close you take a cab home and pass out in your dress.

I'll be just fine on my couch today, and attending a meeting rather than a ball tonight. I won't miss the pearls or the legislative aides. Feeling part of history is so much easier when you're sober.

The One Who Stands by Her Man

I couldn't stop myself. I broke down and read American Wife. I found Prep, Sittenfeld's previous novel, incredibly readable, so I knew this would at the very least be an entertaining diversion.

My understanding is that Sittenfeld researched and wrote the book out of a fascination with Laura Bush, out of a desire to understand her. I can absolutely see that. Here's a woman who seems to be so different from her husband, and a woman who says so little about anything, that it really would be interesting to know who she is, what she stands for. In Sittenfeld's version she's not only a Democrat but a pretty liberal Democrat; she's pro-choice, she's against the war. She's not born-again, and doesn't even practice any organized religion. Is any of this true? Who knows. Sure, it's nice to think so, but this is a work of speculative fiction, and as such perhaps says more about Sittenfeld, and maybe about the book's readers, than it does about Laura Bush.

Because she's quiet, because she's private, she's, in a way, a cipher. Believe that women should stand in the shadows quietly, caring only about children and children's books? You can believe that's the kind of woman she is. Believe that she's incredibly decent, and that if she loves her husband he must be decent, as well? You can believe that, if you want. Believe that she's secretly someone who loves her husband but hates what he stands for? You're also possibly correct. Believe that she's more Rovian than Rove? Have at it.

Because I wasn't looking for real insight into the mind of Laura Bush I enjoyed the novel. It's also essentially fluff, a good diversion. I read it waiting to get to the parts everyone knows about, to see how Sittenfeld would handle them: the deadly crash, buying the baseball team, becoming born-again, etc. In the end, I was left wishing that Bush would actually write a memoir, and that if she would write one that it would be as honest as this work of fiction pretends to be. But of course that will never happen, and instead, at the end, we are left only with our own speculations and desires.

Life During Wartime

What was so immediate, so tremendous, is now, seven years later, just another thing I remember. What was momentous is now a just series of images. It's easy to recall them; it's harder to access all that I felt. How can I describe watching the first tower fall from my mid-town office? Or the way, for 20 minutes, we discussed with disbelief how odd it would look now, with only one tower, only to watch the second turn to dust? How can I describe the walk home, downtown, going against the flow of powder-coated refugees streaming toward the bridges, blank with shock? The emptiness of my neighborhood, the utter quiet that descended, the line of ambulances on First Avenue, the staging ground for triage that turned out to be unnecessary?

Can I describe my friend who perished there, her laugh, her solicitude, her youth? Can I ever communicate the feeling of my neighborhood stripped of traffic but for the fighter planes circling overhead? Even my cat knew things were off-kilter; he took, that week, to peeing in the sink.

The missing posters, the vigils, the slow sense that what could be found had been found and that everything that had fallen apart would someday be put back together. It slips away until it's something we commemorate annually and then pack away for the rest of the year, stored with our American flags, our sense of unity, our common feelings of loss mingled with pride and strength.

Today is the day we make ourselves remember what we promised, all those years ago, to never forget.

Cerealized Drama

On with life. Remember Quisp? Back in the day it was my favorite cereal for two reasons. First, I loved Quisp himself, that short outer space man with the propeller on his head. Secondly, because my mother didn't understand that it was essentially Captain Crunch in a different shape made by a different company, it was the only really sweet "sugar" cereal I was allowed to have.

Rules about food in our house were randomly created and steadfastly maintained. For example, my mother wasn't kosher, but she had been raised that way. Our house was in no way kosher, not by any stretch of the imagination. But shrimp were the only shellfish allowed. She'd serve pork chops, but not ham. We had bacon, but not sausage. We also had Christmas stockings, but no tree, so at least she was consistent in her randomness.

What she referred to as "sugar cereals" were bad for me and were forbidden. I understand that packaged food wasn't labeled as thorougly then as it is today, so maybe that explains why I was allowed to have Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, and Corn Pops; if it had a healthy-sounding word in its name, it must be healthy, right? What I wanted most of all was Captain Crunch, that nirvanna of a bowl full of sweet I encountered at friends' houses the mornings after sleepovers. No way; strictly forbidden. Maybe the docile, smiling Quaker on the label gave my mother a false sense of security (after all, would a Quaker ever endanger America's youth?), maybe it was the word "oats" in the Quaker Oats logo, but for some reason she felt that Quisp and it's brother-cereal, Quake, were acceptable.

Quisp and Quake were exactly the same cereal but in different shapes, and named for different cartoon characters. Quisp was of course from another galaxy and so was not truly sexually determined. His dress and hairstyle seemed to indicate that he was in fact a "he," but his masculinity was akin to that of a stuffed animal. His voice was high-pitched, his mannerisms childlike. Whatever masculinity he had was pre-pubescent, unthreatening. Quake, on the other hand, came from underground. While Quisp's cereal came from the galaxies, Quake's was of the earth, produced by earthquakes. Quake was muscle-bound, deep-voiced, virile. In the commercials shown during Saturday morning cartoons, Quisp and Quake are rivals for our affection. They are presented as superheroes, and in ad after ad they compete to see who can save the earth, Quake with brawn, Quisp with brains.

Naturally, I loved Quisp and hated Quake. After all, I could never grow up to be Quake. I'd never have brawn or a deep voice, but I could one day save the world through intellect and charm. My nerdiness could one day pay off. I don't know if the Quaker Oats marketers introduced two versions of the same cereal so that one would appeal to girls and one boys, but whatever they were thinking it didn't work. Sometime in the early 70s they decided they weren't selling enough of either cereal and to stop competing with themselves; one cereal would be discontinued.

They had a contest, and everyone could vote, including kids. Who do you want to keep around, Quisp or Quake? I enthusiastically voted for Quisp. How could he lose? He was cute, he was smart, he had a propeller on his head, for crying out loud! In what would become a lifelong pattern, I was on the wrong end of the vote. Quisp was toast, relegated to the infinite cosmos of memory.

Proud, defiant, I never ate Quake. Golden Grahams became my favorite cereal (again, the name of the cereal tricking my mother into a belief in imaginary health benefits) until I was old enough to stop eating cereal altogether. I never liked milk, you see. I only wanted sweet cereals to flavor the milk so that I could drink it. Quake also eventually disappeared from supermarket shelves, another victim of free love and disco.

All these years later I am avenged. A Quisp cult has been slowly growing, aided and abbetted by the internet. By the turn of the century, Quisp was again being produced in limited quantities. Today, it's available nationwide, at least according to Quaker Oats. Quisp has his own website, and a very good one at that. If you can't find it at your local grocery store, you can order some from the site. Chalk another one up for the nerds.

Parting Words

I spent the long weekend reading another long Nixon book, J. Anthony Lukas' Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years. I think I'm finally done with my little study of the Nixon administration, not because a book hasn't been published for each day he spent in the Oval Office, but because the facts are the facts, I've now studied them from all angles, and it's just time to move on. So, these will be my last words on Richard Nixon, or at least my last words until October 20, the 35th anniversary of the Saturday Night Massacre.

Through this book, I learned that not only was Nixon a little crazy, but his aides needed a good civics lesson. Halderman and Mitchell in particular seemed to lack an understanding of the line between use and abuse of power. They all just egged each other on. If Nixon hadn't been taping his conversations the whole thing would have stopped short of the Presidency; those tapes were the only evidence that he was aware of the break-in and cover-up. And if Nixon hadn't been worried about money, he wouldn't have been taping conversations. Apparently it was his intent to donate the tapes to the National Archive or a library somewhere in order to have several years worth of tax deductions.

Why have I been so fascinated with all this? As the 10-year anniversary of his death approaches, I've been thinking of my father. He was completely fascinated with and absorbed by Watergate. Not only did he insist I watch the Senate hearings, and that I not only watch but bring out my tape recorder and record for him Nixon's resignation the next year, but he also tried to convince me and my mother to picket the White House with "Impeach the President" signs when we went to DC to visit a family friend the summer of 1973. I was nine years old and the whole thing was not only meaningless but boring. Watergate was something that interrupted my morning television, nothing more.

He had always hated Nixon, and I think that he experienced the scandal as vindication, proof that he was right about that man and about Republicans in general. Reagan never got his goat the way Nixon did, so he was shockingly sanguine about Iran-Contra. In a way I'm sorry he missed out on the W administration, although I suspect the past eight years might have killed him if the heart disease hadn't gotten there first.

Politics was one of the few things my father and I could talk about. He was a mechanical engineer, and I had no interest in the workings of combustion engines or printing presses. He had no interest in modern American poetry or literary theory. By the time I was old enough to care about politics Watergate was a thing of the past. By learning more about it now I've felt closer to him, even as I realize that the memory of his voice and of his presence is moving farther and farther from my grasp. To care now about the events of 1973 is in a way to care about my childhood and to feel the presence of both my parents, glued to the black and white TV in the family room of their suburban house while dinner cooks.

Just before leaving the White House for the last time, Nixon addressed his family and supporters. "We think that when someone dear to us dies, we think that when we lose an election, we think that when we suffer a defeat, that all is ended," he said. "Not true. It is only a beginning, always."

Overheard at Sweet Briar College

I've been going through more piles of old papers, and I found the following. These are real quotes said by real people at my alma mater sometime between fall, 1984 and May, 1985. I can't believe I survived.

When you hang around with women, you kind of degrade yourself.
- Ross Dabney, Professor of English

But black people here seem so happy - they're always singing and dancing.
- Amy Graves, Class of 1988

I think people in the outside community are sort of envious of us. I mean, they'll spend their lives in places like a grocery story and we've got the chance to be bankers or something.
- Page Franson, Class of 1987

The Hebrew Profits
- course title from January, 1985 Continuing Studies Catalogue

Do the gay people on campus have any distinguishing characteristics?
- Amy Graves, Class of 1988

There's no need for women's studies here, we already do plenty of that. Why, I always teach Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view.
- Ralph Dabney, Professor of English
But Ross, it wasn't written from Ophelia's point of view.
- Nenah Fry, President of the College

I had always suspected Cyndi Lauper was a feminist.
- Elizabeth Baer, Assistant Dean

We have enough women here already. Why study them?
- Jean Jenkins, Class of 1986

I've never met a real atheist before. Let's discuss it sometime - over tea, perhaps?
- Maggie Fogarty, Class of 1987

History changes a lot.
- Bella Abzug, guest speaker

I enjoy going to Washington and Lee and degrading myself. So what?
- Joan Collins, Class of 1985

I'm voting for Reagan because I don't believe in women's rights.
- Stephanie Hardin, Class of 1987

Which world war was with the Germans?
- Nancy McMullen, Class of 1985

I love money. I'm going to marry someone who has a lot of it.
- Lewis Lagrone, Class of 1985

I hate Milton. He's an asshole.
- Lewis Lagrone, Class of 1985

You know Latin pretty well. You should go to Latin America and speak it.
- Lenetta Archard, Class of 1985

For Black History Month I want to interview some blacks from Amherst to find out what it was like to be alive during slavery.
- Maggie Fogarty, Class of 1987

I can't break down the comprehensive fee but I can tell you this: part of it goes for board, and all the rest, except for the part that goes to the rooms, goes to tuition.
- Peter V. Daniel, Vice-President and Treasurer

Why does everyone make such a big deal out of Soviet jewelery?
- Nancy McMullen, Class of 1985

What I Didn't Watch

I was one of the five Americans who didn't watch the American Idol finale last night. I've never seen one episode of the show. I don't have any good reason to not watch it; I just don't. Sitting in a restaurant last night surrounded by people glued to the television above the bar while I focused obliviously on some really good pizza made me think about all the television I haven't watched. I didn't have a TV for most of the 1980s, so there's a good lot of it.

I've never seen a single episode of St. Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues, for example. Never watched Cheers, Family Ties, any of that stuff. Name a show that was popular in the 80s and I haven't seen it. While I'm admitting things I may as well confess that I also didn't watch Seinfeld; I thought it was horribly misogynistic and participated in a one-woman boycott. I've never seen even one episode of Murder, She Wrote. I recall nearly my entire college gathering to watch The Thorn Birds together in various commons rooms (yes, I'm so old that no one brought their own TVs to college) but I must have read a book instead.

I never saw any of the nighttime soaps - no Dallas, no Dynasty, no Falcon Crest. In the 1990s, once I had a TV, I did partake of their spawn: I'm talking about you, Melrose Place. Still, I managed to miss an entire generation of television. I don't regret it, but it's odd. My cultural memory jumps from early SNL straight to Party of Five with pretty much noting in between.

What did I do without a TV? I read, wrote a dissertation, worked, listened to music. I met friends for drinks or for dinner. I sat enjoying really good pizza marveling as everyone around me guffawed at The Cosby Show. I lived. I left the restaurant last night just before Idol's winner was announced. I have no idea who won, but here I am, still alive.

From the Archives

We might be lurching toward paperlessness, but I came of age in a world full of paper. My house is full of paper: notes from when I was teaching, journals I've kept since the age of 12, notes from papers I wrote in grad school plus the papers themselves, poems I've written since the age of 13. It's a lot of paper. I spent some time last weekend trying to weed out some of it, but it's hard to let go. It feels akin to tossing out my past, and I'm not ready to toss out my past.

Then, of course, rather than weeding I started reading. The weirdness of experiencing a journal kept by my 14 year-old self is fodder for a different post, but I will say that if you ever want a weird experience, spend some time with yourself as a young teenager. In looking through a folder, I found this poem. I was 21 when I wrote it. I'd pretty much forgotten about it, but I think I still like it. At least, I still like it today. Meet the 21 year-old me:

Night Falls at Sam’s Place

neon light
drops from the bar
like petals tonight,
the radio only plays
songs we can sing to,
and the world
has become a home

and at the bar
the bikers
are taking off their beards

and the pool players
are humming a tune
they call Friday night
that everyone is singing

and even if it rains
the puddles will sit there,
wanting to shine

the bikers’ faces will gleam
like polished chrome
and they’ll waltz
spinning around the bar,
buying each other rounds

and the players will tell you,
Each of these balls
is a man
who didn’t kill me,
and they’ll pocket them,
laughing, one by one

while the city packs away
its parking meters
and a janitor swings his broom
like a date at Roseland,
knowing it isn’t his life
he’s been collecting

and when an old woman
enters the bar
she’ll throw aside her hat
and bags and say,
Call me work
with no payday,
footless dancer,
cup without wine

and the janitor
will let her sleep
in his building

and under our clothes
our bodies will glisten
as we move like dancers,
all of us,
as we become a shot glass
that never empties,
a street with no noise

and children won’t cry
in upstairs rooms
and the food
on every menu
will come without asking

and when the bar closes
we’ll enter the night together
and it will be soft
as a breast,
and we’ll go down on it
without fear,
this world
falling from our mouths
like kisses

Happy Camper

The weather here went right from early spring to August-like, but I'm not complaining. I instead look at early warmth as the one good thing about global warming (well, that and the fact that New Jersey will be underwater, making my house beachfront property). For the past week, when I haven't been working or gardening, I've been lying on my porch reading Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us. Weller entwines the biographies of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon, discussing their lives and music within the context of 60s and 70s sexual politics. At least that's what Weller believes her book is about. The music and the lives are in there, and some sexual politics as well, but I'd say about 70% of the book is just good gossip. Weller indefatigably chronicles each and every affair of all three women which, in Joni Mitchell's case in particular, turns out to be no small feat.

If you're interested in learning about these three lives, or about who slept with James Taylor when, then it's definitely a good summer read, perfect for a chaise lounge on a warm day. My main take-away from the book was that it brought back fond memories of Jew Camp.

What, you've never heard of Jew Camp? It's ostensibly a place where campers celebrate their Jewish heritage or some such thing but where the real lessons had to do with backrubs, boating, and learning how to turn up the collar of your Izod shirt. Just ask any Jewish person you know who grew up in the the NYC/Philly corridor and its environs and they'll tell you all about Jew Camp.

When Joni, Carole, and Carly were writing and recording their milestone albums I was busy listening to the Jackson 5, so I was a late convert to their music, but I have Jew Camp to thank for my introduction to the mellow. As a young teenager I spent time at one particular camp on youth group retreats - two weeks in the summer, one week in the winter. This camp had a radio station (from what I can gather all Jew Camps had radio stations, as well as newspapers and yearbooks - I guess they were teaching us how to control the media), and we'd get dressed mornings accompanied by James Taylor, Loggins and Messina, Carole King. During the downtime before dinner the older boys would give the older girls backrubs while "Loving You Is the Right Thing to Do" played softly in the background. After dinner guitars would be broken out and everyone would join in a rendition of "Been to Canaan." The first rule of Jew Camp was that there was no hard rock at Jew Camp.

I'm not talking about the early 70s here. During the time I'm talking about, that music was already something of the past. When I bought Tapestry in 1978 it appealed to me not just because the songs were soulful but also because it sounded to me then, as it does to this day, like an artifact from a hippie past, from a recent time that was already gone. Thanks to Jew Camp I learned to love the singer-songwriters, but in the rest of my life I was learning to love a different kind of music. In 1978 I'd listen to Tapestry in my yellow bedroom, followed by some Fleetwood Mac, finished off with Horses, in a sense inadvertently charting the course of women in rock through the 70s with one evening of music.

By my last couple of years in high school I'd moved on completely, not only from Jew Camp and backrubs but also from songs you couldn't dance to, if by "dance" you mean throw your body around a room as violently as possible. I've now moved on from that as well, and from the yellow bedroom and my Sony turntable, but I have Weller's book to thank for taking me back, temporarily, to all of it.

Memoir in Six Words

Can you describe your life in six words? The editors of Smith magazine asked readers to do just that, and a compilation of the best submissions has been published as a book, Not Quite What I Was Planning. Now everyone' s doing it, and you can too. Here are some examples:

Failure was apparently an option here.

Crawl, step, run, step, crawl, lay.

Making shit up as I go.

California, Pennsylvania, Jersey, Manhattan, Vancouver, Seattle.

Fat man in a sweater vest.

Here are a couple that I wrote:

I meant it at the time.

Play, Stop. No FF, no rewind.

Moved one place, then to another.

Too many books. Too little time.

Dog. Dog. Cat. Cat. Dog. Dog.

So, join in - see if you can write your autobiography in only six words.