My friend and coworker Rebecca made an extensive list of things she’d like for her birthday. I really like her rationale:

my list is all about ‘you’ because I’m curious who will answer, what you will come up with, and because it will mean that on my birthday I’ll be thinking about people thinking about me, which is a cozy thing to think about.

So here I am and all the best on your twenty-third…

a picture of your shadow

My shadow

a recording of you reading a poem, singing a song, or saying a sentence

Pint Pot and Billy From Eureka: The songs that made Australia compiled by Warrent Fahey. Version as sung by Cyril Duncan of Hawthorne Queensland. Recorded in one-track with Garageband and my MacBook’s built-in mic.

a sentence with a word you like

Seven knights drove up to Flushing.

a description of a tree you know

I know a family of trees on a block along my jogging route in my neighborhood. Jamaica Plain is known to be full of trees, but usually the varieties are pretty well mixed. On this block though, a whole grove of Ginkgo trees grows, or as close to a grove as you can get in urban Boston.

The trees are all about 20 feet tall with rough gray bark. In the spring and summer they are deep green. In the Fall they all turn a self-conscious bright yellow, in contrast to the other trees’ reds and oranges.

One tree in the grove is set back off the street. It has a wound on its sunset side. The tree is also female, the only one, and is neighbor to the grove’s lone outsider: a juvenile Callery Pear that is always losing branches.

an mp3 of a song you like

Greatest Gatsbees(mp3) by (famous band) Houseguest. Goes great with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Wolf Parade.

a drawing of your mittens/gloves

My mittens

the html hex or rgb of a color you like

20 212 74 or #14D44A