Eight things
June 12, 2007
My friend the Feminarian tagged me to participate in the "eight things" meme. The idea is to post eight random facts about myself, or habits of mine, and then tag eight people to do the same.
I find open-ended memes like this one surprisingly challenging. (Earlier this year I was tapped to share five things you may not know about me, and it took me a long while to come up with good ones. Something about wanting to be revelatory enough that the post is interesting, but not so revelatory that I overshare.) But hey: this is probably the only blogging I'll manage to do today, so I'm glad Stasi linked my way.
Let's see...
1. The only Turkish word I know is batilgian, which means eggplant. It's a foodstuff of which Ethan isn't very fond, so I make a point of cooking and eating it when he's out of town. (Today's lunch: a baked eggplant dish from Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant, far and away the best Moosewood cookbook out there.)
2. When I was in poetry grad school, I tried to read a collection of poems every week. It's a discipline I've let slip, in the years since Bennington, and I feel guilty about it sometimes. Lately I've started visiting used-books stores and buying slim volumes of poems by people whose work I don't know. I figure if I'm lucky, somebody will pick up one of mine that way, some day.
3. I never wear closed-toed shoes in the summertime if I can help it. Every few years I wear through the soles of my Birkenstocks, but it's totally worth it. Summer is the season for pedicures, walking barefoot through the grass, and displaying my shiny silver toe-ring.
4. The last cd I bought was Sounds
Eclectic: The Covers Project. I'm a longtime fan of
KCRW Rare on Air and the Sounds Eclectic series, and I also have a fondness for well-turned cover songs. The album doesn't
knock my socks off the way I wanted it to, but kd lang's cover of "Hallelujah" is gorgeous.
5. Last erev Shabbat, before services began, we were talking about the various birdcalls we could hear through the open windows. (My shul sits at the edge of a field and the edge of a wetland, so there are birds aplenty.) I learned that evening to identify the sound of a red-winged blackbird, and confirmed the song of the wood thrush, which is my favorite.
6. I was born on the spring equinox. Technically I'm an Aries, though only barely. I've always felt Piscean -- more watery than fiery per se. Recently I learned that according to one kabbalistic understanding water and fire represent a pair of opposite sefirot, hesed (love) and din (judgement or rigor), and their conjunction symbolizes a kind of wholeness. Maybe that's where the equinox comes in -- balancing the two.
7. I'm apparently incapable of making a brief eight-item list; I have to expand and qualify. I also overthink things. Like blog memes.
8. Tonight I'm meeting two friends at Images Cinema to see Waitress. I don't see a ton of movies, but I'm a sucker for a good smalltown story (longtime faves include Local Hero and Mystery, Alaska) -- and the prospect of seeing Nathan Fillion on the big screen again makes me happy.
And as for tagging eight bloggers? I never know who to choose; it's hard to know who will be pleased to be tapped, and who will be exasperated by the intrusion. After spending too much time browsing my aggregator and blogroll, waffling, I'm copping out -- if you would like to do this meme, please consider yourself tapped (and drop me a link to your post in comments)!