A Six Word Memoir

If my blog is a testament to anything, it's to the fact of my own verbosity. (And "verbosity" is a testament to the fact that, when I run out of words, I'm not shy about inventing my own.) But a while back, I heard a fun, fascinating little story on NPR that challenged me to slow my verbal torrent for a moment and consider the following question:

Can you sum up your love life in exactly six words?

Well, gosh... Love is so grand, so big, so beautiful, so tempermental, so grave, so fickle, so overwhelming, so comforting, so eternal. This was going to be harder than I thought.

Smith Magazine put out this challenge to the masses and collected so-called "six word memoirs" for publication. The following is a list of a few of those "memoirs" which Smith Magazine accepted:

Red-eye. Him window. Me aisle. Love.
- Joanne Flynn Black

If I get Chlamydia, blame MySpace.
- Hanorah Slocum

Will government ever let us marry?
- Viki Marsh

Silently suffered his facial hair experiments.
- Elizabeth Minkel

What do you want for dinner?
- Drew Magary

If only he wasn't a Republican.
- Holly Fitzpatrick

Tried men. Tried women. Like cats.
- Dona Bumgarner

Funny, poignant, sad, true. It's poetry! And there's something peaceful about being given the parameter of six words. One of my favorite poetic structures is the Haiku, mostly because achieving something profound with only 17 syllables is thrilling for me. It's akin to bronc busting or raising a Bonsai Tree or caligraphy. It takes precision. It takes humility.

The following is my six-word memoir on my love life:

Running around the world, holding hands.

If you feel up for it, give it a go... just six little words, and a little bit of therapy along the way. (The complete article on the venture can be found here .)