I don’t like memes or favorites lists, because my favorites are constantly in flux and too numerous to list anyway. Some of my favorites I can’t think of on demand. Others have replaced them in the forefront of my thoughts. The present distracts me from the past, overriding memories.
If you ask what my five favorite birds are, I may list the last five species that visited my yard and forget I’ve ever seen an osprey, a roadrunner, a California quail. I might forget the red-tailed hawk that dropped the pigeon it had just caught when it saw my van driving toward it, or the two times I came across a great blue heron standing beside my path while I walked.
But sometimes I come across a name, an image, a sound, and I think, “Oh, how I love that.”
Do you have favorites or memories you don’t recall when someone asks, that come in odd moments like patches sewn to older thoughts?
Just the other day, while thinking about peace, I remembered a favorite song. “From A Distance” is most famous because Bette Midler’s 1990 recording of it won a Grammy. It’s written by Julie Gold. Here’s the snippet of the lyrics that came to mind a few days ago:
“From a distance
You look like my friend
Even though we are at war
From a distance
I just cannot comprehend
What all this fighting’s for”
1.
You just listed some of the reasons that I don’t participate in memes. I could complete one at one time, and if I redid it the next day, it would seem as if someone else filled in the blanks.
Same with favorites. My favorite people stay the same, but everything else changes with the day or the mood. Although I always like Neil Diamond best as a singer - unless it’s a day that I like Josh Groban best.
Comment by cas — June 8, 2006 @ 2:44 pm
2.
I too stay away from memes, for both the reasons you mention and because it feels like a cop-out to be because I couldn’t think of anything original to post that day. On the other hand, it does serve a nice purpose in connecting bloggers to each other, revealing a bit more of themselves and forming a more active circle.
Comment by susan — June 9, 2006 @ 7:20 am
3.
Sometimes poetry’s like that for me. If you ask me my favorite poems, I’ll probably draw a blank. But then as the events of my life unfold, I will be prompted to remember and quote them.
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state….”
“When I consider how my light is spent in this dark world and wide And that one talent which is death to hide lodg’d with me useless….”
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky…”
“Whose woods these are, I think I know, His house is in the village though, He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow….”
And others like them. They roll and tumble and skip and tiptoe through my brain at odd moments, amusing and bringing pleasure as I tell them over again, like beads on a rosary.
Comment by Sarah — June 9, 2006 @ 10:59 am
4.
I actually like doing memes, but I don’t do the assigning-them-to-others part. My favorite birds, by the way, are bluebirds (cuz their so vividly blue, and cute, too). Then Stellar Jays (vividly blue and stunningly majestic), and robins (cuz they have interesting personalities).
Comment by violetismycolor — June 12, 2006 @ 7:30 pm