A snow/ice/rain weather front moved into Baltimore about noon today and no one could predict what it would be like by 4 p.m. I don’t mind driving in snow or rain, but ice is simply impossible around here. So I walked to the soup kitchen where I work Thursday afternoons, a distance of just under three miles.
Along the way, I saw a joint called The Opposite Sidewalk Saloon. The sign is positioned in such a way that one would never see it from a car. I filed it away, thinking it would make a good name for a short story. Then I recalled how I found what I always swore would be the title to my memoir. It was on a menu at a diner near the morgue: “Shaved Meats, Piled High.”
We may have done this before, but let’s do it again. Found poetry, potential titles for your memoirs. Better yet: Found poetry that you’ll use to title your memoirs.
The title for my one woman show – performance memoir, if you will – about my post-divorce life, found in my brain, not on the street: “Smart Men, Dirty Toilets”.
The best found on the street – at a nut stand on the street in the Pigalle in Paris: “For More Hygiene, Use the Shovel”.
Not really an answer about memoirs abut about my future death. Yesterday in the Gazette(local giveaway paper) was the story of how I expect to die. A women was driving on the Beltway when a tire came off another car,smashed through her car and killed her. I have told people I am not worried about terrorists(went to Israel last year, London this year, work and live near DC- go through it every day, go up to NYC a few times a year) or flying or bio-plagues- just something coming off a car or a truck on I-95 or the Beltway into my little Toyota Corolla.
Wait, one more – I *just* tried to find an old boyfriend – you know, THE ONE, my soulmate – on myspace.com (I have a sick new addiction to these web communities for people 20 years younger than me – boy there are some hoochie mamas on these) and I just got this:
Your search bears no result.
No shit.
Andrea, me too — in my blue Miata — just a tiny blue smear on the side of the road.
Titles: The World is My Ashtray
I always prized this line from an article about me that appeared in the student newspaper at the local juvenile detention facility. (It was part of my beat.) I had gone on a getting-to-know-you visit, with no article in mind. The student journalist wrote:
“When asked what she was looking for, Miss Lippman could give no answer.”
Because I began each year of my education in a different school in a different state: “Moving Pictures.”
The title I saw in the street was in the window of a law firm across from the courthouse: “Alternative Sentencing.”
I “found” this one in an internet scam e-mail I received this morning: “share the joy after all the sufferness at that time.” If I ever get past the ‘sufferness’ in this time and reach the ‘joy,’ maybe I’ll use the phrase to subtitle my memoirs.
I always wanted to write a song called ‘Pet Meat’, with each verse focusing on the different meanings.
Pet Meat: food for animals
Pet Meat: food made from animals
Pet Meat: show your steak some affection
Pet Meat: put a leash on a sausage
For a memoir title, I want the song name listed on a bootleg Bob Dylan tape I still kick myself for not having bought in 1988 when I saw it displayed atop a street vendor’s blanket on a Hong Kong sidewalk:
“Bowling in the Wind”
Unfortunately, I only had two bucks HK at the time and was desperately thirsty, so I bought a juicebox of chrysanthemum tea from the guy next to him instead.
Laura, did you see your mention on Miss Snark’s blog yesterday? She is obviously a woman of excellent taste… whoever she may be.
Cornelia, you’re very kind. (I already knew that, but it never hurts to say it again.) I did see Miss Snark’s lovely words — but it was the comment section, where an anonymous poster pondered on what will happen if I breed, that really cracked me up.
” Pet Meat: food for animals…”
Reminds me of the “Pets Or Meat” segment of Michael Moore’s movie, ” Roger And Me” that featured the rabbit lady.
I’m not a “I Like Mike” guy, [even though I agree with him on many issues,] but that scene was tombstone-noir poetry; in a Tarrantino kinda’ way.
–john–
My potential memoir title is NORMAL FEMALE, because when my mom was pregnant with me, there were some concerns about whether everything would be OK because she was — at least for the time — older than the average pregnant woman. So she went for amnio and the results came back that everything was fine. She told her mother, who kvelled, “A NORMAL FEMALE!” in relief.
Also, because of the irony…
At the bottom of the hill, about a mile from where I live, is an orange building with its name painted on the side: “TigerTown Discount BEVERAGE & REDEMPTION.”
That’s good enough for me…
“TigerTown Discount BEVERAGE & REDEMPTION.”
I like this!
“Beverage and Redemption” sounds like the subtitle of a Frank McCourt memoir….
When driving to Texas from Colorado, on the stretch between Dallas and Waco, I saw a shack-type building advertising Taxidermy and Jerky. Made me want to stop for a roadkill snack. NOT!
Beverage and Redemption. That’s perfect.
Now I need a drink.
Beverage and Redemption is gorgeous!
Sarah: I was disappointed to find no definition of ‘kvelled’ in my Macquarie dictionary, but when I used the one built into my Mac …
kvell |kv?l| verb [ intrans. ] informal feel happy and proud : my mom was kvelling�bursting with pride. ORIGIN 1960s: from Yiddish kveln, from Middle High German, literally �well up.�
Inspired by what seems to happen this season:
A Strand Short.
Seems apt.
“Not To Be Used As A Flotation Device”
–J
I have come up with 2 possible titles for my memoirs, or (since I’ll undoubtedly put the memoirs off until it’s too late) epitaphs
THE WORLD WILL LITTLE NOTE, NOR LONG REMEMBER
or
KIDS! DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!
To Andrea and Barbara,
I did have a very near miss on I-70 in an Escort about 15 years ago. As the car was doing a 360 on dry pavement and I was watching the headlights, semi tires, etc. whizzing around and trying to keep the car under control, I calmly (really) thought to myself, “Gee, I always wondered how it would happen.” I either missed everything or everything missed me, and I came through it unscratched and taking myself even less seriously ever since.
Not being much of a poetry buff, I’d rather have a line from a favorite aria – ‘Dilegua, o notte’ (Nessun Dorma-Turandot/Puccini)-’May This Night End.’ I’d play Aretha’s version whilst I wrote.
I have recognized some found poetry, but not that I recognized as being a title for my memoir.
I’m more of an expert at found resturants. One of the things I look for are ones with no signage, or that don’t stick out, that still have a bunch of people inside. It’s a definite plus if it’s an ethnic resturant, when it’s mostly full of that ethnicity. Though, one of the last ones I wandered into was an Italian resturant, that I’d driven by many times, but hadn’t noticed. It was pretty full, especially since it was past 10:00. I think most everyone inside was an Armenian, busy playing an unknown card game. Unknown to me, anyway. I have found some great resturants, just wandering around. To survive, they have to be good enough to keep people returning as it’s harder for them to attract new business.
I don’t think I have enough distance to seriously think about writing a memoir. Every so often, I recognize something that could go into one. For me, it’s kind of like found poetry.
don cannon
“NEVER EAT THE GARNISH IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT.” This was said to Syd and me very excitedly by a Chinese waiter in you know what after he saw we had eaten the grated cabbage on an appitizer plate. I have often wished I could write so that I could use that as my title.
Yesterday I was reading a legal piece of blah when I saw this and thought it was worthy of our found memoir title.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Don,
I don’t think I’ll ever write a memoir because I don’t want to violate the privacy of my parents and sister, among others. But I love the form very much — just finished Julie and Julia, am in the middle of The Glass Castle and have Pete Hamill’s book about New York in my TBR pile.
Plus, there’s no real story in my life. And my meditations on memory have taught me how wrong I am about some facts.
Small example: I’ve been trying to summon up, store by store, Security Square Mall, circa 1974. Baltimore still had several local department stores then and I would have bet huge sums that Stuart’s was the store that anchored one end of the plus-shaped Security Square. But my research established that it was Hoschild Kohn’s. And yet . . . my brain will not let go of the idea that it was Stuart’s, a fact that imposes itself on a sad narrative about trying on clothes when I was at my plumpest.
So if I’m wrong about the name of the department store, am I wrong about the gabardine skirt, size 14? Does it matter? In other people’s memoirs — not such much, not to me. But as a former journalist, it has to be one or the other for me, fact or fiction, not my version of facts.
So, no; SHAVED MEATS, PILED HIGH will never be written. But it’s a good title. Speaking of which, what do people here think of SECURITY SQUARE for a stand-alone novel? It is, alas, a little too literal, but it’s the actual setting (in part) of the next book.
“Baltimore still had several local department stores then and I would have bet huge sums that Stuart’s was the store that anchored one end of the plus-shaped Security Square. But my research established that it was Hoschild Kohn’s. And yet . . . my brain will not let go of the idea that it was Stuart’s, …”
But there was a Stewart’s at Security Square, wasn’t there? Not necessarly in the main anchor spot but there?? I didn’t make it that far west very often and so my memory could be really off, but I do remember, I think, a Stewart’s in Security Square (but then I remember it as Stewart’s not Stuart’s, so what do I know!).
Not to sound depressing but what comes to mind is from most of my clothes, my height…my life. It is MEDIUM.
If there was a Stewart’s — good catch on the spelling, Diane — it wasn’t there in 1974. It was at the end of that strange little add-on over at Westview.
Unless . . . could there have been four department store anchors? But it seems to me that the entrance by the movie theater didn’t have a department store at all.
Diane, can you remember the other stores there? So far, I recall: Harmony Hut, a natural food store, KarmelKorn, Baskin-Robbins. There was a drugstore, although I don’t remember which one, and one of those music stores (Kitt’s?) where I used to see the junior high school band teacher playing the organ on weekends.
It finally came to me this morning – the title for my memoir might have to come from a photo my mother took in London. The sign read “More Balls Than Most.”