It's not so much about posting a piece that you love of your own - it's more about posting a piece that you think is immediately recognisable as you.

Bev, I picked something so strange -- it's so hard to pick one small thing. I like a lot of my stuff, too, but as soon as I picked one, I wished I had picked something else.

I've had a hard time determining a favorite. There are articles I've written that I think were pretty good, but it's hard to find a paragraph or so.

The bit I posted, as a writer (as a reader, I posted Shirley Jackson's prologue to Hill House), isn't remotely my favourite. But as something that worked to encapsulate what I think of as my voice, it worked.

BTW, this isn't a friendslocked meme; anyone can come play. I'm debg at livejournal. Writers, all welcome. And it doesn't have to be fiction - if it's fic, or poetry, or drama, or anything else that you feel catches your voice, go for it.

Deb, where's your tag from? It's on the tip of my tongue -- I *know* I know it, but I can't place it.

I did a stupid thing -- when we changed computers, I apparently didn't get everything off the old one. I was actually looking for part of a personal essay I wrote years ago, and it's gone, baby. Not on a disk, and I can't find a hard copy. Which is of the suck, let me tell you. I know there's other stuff I'm going to look for one day, and it will have suffered the same fate.

The tag is a Robert Hunter lyric, from "Eyes of the World":

Right outside this lazy summer home
You ain't got time to call your soul a critic, no
Right outside the lazy gate
Of winter's summer home
Wondering where the nuthatch winter's wings a mile long
Just carried the bird away

Chorus

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
But the heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own

There comes a redeemer and he slowly, too, fades away
And there follows his wagon behind him that's loaded with clay
And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom and decay
And night comes so quiet, it's close on the heels of the day

[chorus]

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own
And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home
Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone
Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own

I like that a lot, Deb. No wonder I like your tag.

Transformations

The wooden case was nothing much to look at, plain and unornamented as she was. Inside, though, was a bright, jumbled profusion of tubes, brushes, pots and paints. She scanned the sections, touching first one brush like a magic talisman, then skimming a finger over that color in comfort. This tube was her favorite: a deep red, matte and velvety, like a blood red damask rose. A line here, a flash of powder there. Did she want to be the bold swallowtail butterfly or have the siren call of the luna moth? What face would emerge from her chrysalis today?

I knew I knew it! I love "Eyes of the World." My memory, she is not so good anymore.

Good one, Sail!

Sail, that's gorgeous.

Amy, I've done exactly the same. In fact we still have a hard drive I'm not ready to admit we can't recover data from--if we ever manage to get it back, I'll probably scratch my head and wonder why I tried so hard to get it back. I'll have forgotten why it was important.

I think probably of all the words, the bit that's most recognizably me is the poem I posted last year in Bitches.

Separate beds

We used to fit like spoons
bodies matching curve and recurve,
turning as one from facing east
to nestle, still sleeping, facing west.

Our patterns diverged: you rolled,
I flipped in place; you claimed
four compass points,
I curled into frontier fringe.

You slept early, I crept away
to read late. My attempts to find space
broke your sleep; it was simpler
to surrender to the couch.

Your guilt at finding me there
did not affect your sprawling sleep;
you insisted on separate beds
for months, till I relented.

It’s fun to play
“your place or mine?”
luxurious to sleep undisturbed
and undisturbing.

But waking solitary in the dark,
I ache for your skin,
for the heat and the rhythm
of breath and blood.

And as a reader, the first lines of the second paragraph of Hoffman's Practical Magic has always taken my breath away. I always hear it in Stockard Channing's semi-singsong voice that she gave Jet, although this line was never used in the movie:

"Inside the house there were no clocks and no mirrors and three locks on each and every door. (snip) Fifteen different sorts of wood had been used for the window seats and the mantels, including golden oak, silver ash, and a peculiarly fragrant cherrywood that gave off the scent of ripe fruit, even in the dead of winter, when every tree outside was nothing more than a leafless black stick."

Edited because poem format always defeats me.