Six Unspectacular Things About Me

I have been tagged by Indigo Bunting. I guess that means I’m It. It’s some kind of meme, I understand, though I’m not altogether sure I know what a meme even is. At any rate, here are six unspectacular things about me:

1. I never sneeze fewer than nine times in a row, and frequently as many as fifteen times. The average is twelve or thirteen sneezes.

2. My chin jumps when I’m under extreme stress (high emotions, prolonged tension on a job, tremendous concentration on a pinball or video game). I came out of the womb with my chin jumping; my mother says that was how she knew I belonged to her, since her chin jumps, as does one of my brothers’. Her father’s did too, if I recall correctly.

3. I prefer to sleep on my right side. If I’ve been lying on my right side to watch television for an hour or so before going to sleep, I may lie on my left side to fall asleep, but it won’t be long before I’m shifting back to my right.

4. I no longer allow myself to own a library card because I have too many books that were borrowed and never returned. Not intentionally stolen, just a baaaaaaad case of procrastination. (They finally send me a nasty letter and a bill for the replacements.)

5. I think Chapter 7 of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” is one of the most transcendent bits of writing in the English language.

6. I have an irrational fear of heights, by which I mean three feet off the ground.

Tagging, I understand, obligates those tagged to write a similar post in their own blogs. So I hereby tag Deloney, Nathan, Houston, Iyov, Lee, and Ryan, unless they have already been tagged by others, in which case they need to tell me so I can find someone else to tag.

Meme Terms and Conditions

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Mention the rules on your blog.

3. List six unspectacular things about you.

4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.

“I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.&#822

That’s the translation of one of my favorite Latin phrases: Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam. Of course, I don’t actually speak Latin. I just subscribe to that famous dictum, Quidquidne latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)

I may have mentioned before how much I like the phrase olet lucernam (it smells of the lamp), which describes writing that has been worried over too much: its lack of free flow betrays the long hours spent writing beside a smoky oil lamp. Here are some new favorites:

Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione. I’m not interested in your dopey religious cult.

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui. Bad kitty! Why don’t you use the cat box? I put new litter in it.

Mihi ignosce. Cum homine de cane debeo congredi. Excuse me. I’ve got to see a man about a dog.

Actus non facit reum nisi mens est rea. I never intended to kill anybody.

Non curo. Si metrum non habet, non est poema. I don’t care. If it doesn’t rhyme, it isn’t a poem. (Obviously I don’t really believe this. It just cracks me up.)

Fac ut nemo me vocet. Hold my calls.

Noli me vocare, ego te vocabo. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Canis meus id comedit. My dog ate it.

Di! Ecce hora! Uxor mea me necabit! God, look at the time! My wife will kill me!

Fac ut gaudeam. Make my day.

Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre? Is that a scroll in your toga, or are you just happy to see me?

Ventis secundis, tene cursum. Go with the flow.

Totum dependeat. Let it all hang out.

Te precor dulcissime supplex! Pretty please with a cherry on top!

Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure. I can’t hear you. I have a banana in my ear.

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Fac ut vivas. Get a life.

Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem. In the old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.

And, in case this all strikes you as a silly waste of time, you’re quite right: Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum, after all. (Garbage in, garbage out!)

Sandhill Cranes

Indigo Bunting just wrote about the annual migration of Canada Geese up in Vermont. It reminded me of Adam’s poem about our own seasonal migrations, though down here it’s the Sandhill Cranes instead of geese. It’s the poem I’m most likely to be found performing at poetry readings. I’m just crazy about it.

Once more they fly. The call comes to me in colors of the sky, in hues of the season so intimate and full of broad sound I expect their wings to tangle in my blowing hair as the seasons roll I look for them from the South in days of expanding light at the turn of the wheel I anticipate their flight from the North when the nights grow long I scan the skies. They are the wings of the unceasing circle; seasons follow them tethered in tow. They fly out of reach and fill the sky, obscure the clouds wingtip touching wingtip as comfortable lovers in the growing dusk, I can hear them long before they are in sight. A faint hint, a tufted whisper like a first bud on a winter tree a faint falling of a solitary yellow leaf. They come and go transient, like so much else here, visiting only briefly the Prairie sands before going on their way, becoming again the invisible landscape of my path through the years. Dynamic in space, fixed in time, I live here and await their passing as part of the order of the land, a living timetable, conductors of the year as much my life as the waning summer rains, the smoky scent of descending winter.