Real-Life Dialogue: Red, Green, and White Edition

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cartoonish representations (like from a mid-20th-century advertisement) of a woman's and a man's heads; a bold, jagged dotted line seems to connect their mouths/ears... the brokenness of the line perhaps being the point

The setting: a Sunday morning in early December, in a small kitchen in a small home in a North Carolina suburb. Water is heating in a couple of electric appliances. She stands at the counter, before a cup with a spoon it, awaiting the silence from one of the appliances. Her cup is brightly colored with the hues most often associated with the month, at least in the US.

He (with a nod towards the cup): Ah. I see you’ve wasted no time getting into the Christmas spirit.

She: Why not? I’ve unpacked the whole set — you want one?

He: No, thank you. Those cups are too small.

(Her mouth drops open.)

She: Grinch!

(They turn away from each other, each smiling in secret self-satisfaction to have played their assigned roles to a T.)

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Real-Life Dialogue: Meta-Dialogue Edition

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[The setting: a Monday evening in a small apartment in North Florida, USA, in March 2021. Dinner is being prepared, mostly by Her. They are just coming off the feverish roller-coaster of symptoms common after Round 2 of the COVID-19 vaccine; they are both a little light-headed, even giddy, with relief — and with the start of their first cocktail hour in a couple of days. As usual, whatever the nominal topic, beneath the repartee is an undercurrent of adversarial good feeling: She says “[A],” for example, and he counters with “But, well, [A-Prime]…”; she replies “But [B]!,” and he ripostes with “Yes, but [B-Prime]!” They both withhold any sign of amusement, but with difficulty. Suddenly, she turns at the counter and signals for silence.]

She: You make talking about everything so difficult…!

He: And yet, you seem to have made it your primary mission in life to get me to talk more about everything—

She: (interrupting) I know! You’d think, after thirty %&*!@?! years — you’d think I’d know better by now!

[Scene dissolves in laughter.]

___________

(Note: for further reference, please visit the Wardrobe Culling Edition of this series, from 2011, and also the more recent Men Are from Illinois, Women Are from Manhattan entry, from 2016. Or, come to think of it, pretty much any of the posts in the series.)

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What You (and I) Cannot Really Know

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Image: 'Portrait of the Unknown Saxophonist,' by Tom Waterhouse

[Image: “Portrait of the Unknown Saxophonist,” by Tom Waterhouse. Found it on Flickr, and use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!).

From whiskey river:

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 1018 joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

(Bill Bryson [source])

…and:

A Face

It’s just by chance, who
you are, but given myself
I take care of this being.
Nobody else will remember
its hunger, cold, loneliness:
I will be reminded, and care.

This face, like an old watch,
I carry wherever I go.
Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,
you should forgive my regret:
my wanting another. I carry it
as you did. It belongs
somewhere, and I am taking it there.

On corners I let the wind
have all the world, and I turn
as a ship accepts the waves
but is itself and has a voyage
built into it, stubbornly.

The choice of being who you are
is offered us, or being nothing.
The mask of myself is an old gift
nobody else took. So I brought it here.

(William Stafford [source: various occurrences around the Web, none complete or canonical])

…and:

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.

(Leila Sales [source])

…and:

What are we? A fleeting, intricate presence riding a tiny speck of water and rock, out here in the dark, sailing the ship of wonder ever more deeply into the void from which we came, that is our true home and mysterious destination.

(Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal [source])

[Read more…]

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Real-Life Dialogue

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The scene: the living room of a rustic but solidly built house in Vermont, with a gorgeous view spread beneath and a Green Mountainside above. It is a summer morning, and the sun is still low but bright and cheerful. The Guest and The Erstwhile Missus are there at the invitation of D—, a colleague of TEM; the two women teach at the same school, and are in the kitchen talking.

For their part, The Guest and G—, who is D—‘s husband, met for the first time just a few minutes ago. They now share a sofa in the living room. They have their feet propped up on a rugged coffee table which G— himself constructed, starting with actual logs and, conceivably, a blacksmith’s forge and anvil. A former industrial chemist in a Pennsylvania city, he moved to Vermont to be with D—; having utterly changed careers, he has become a successful carpenter. He built this very house, as well as its two predecessors. His whole demeanor seems that of New Hampshire (The Granite State) rather than Vermont: craggy. On the TV over the fireplace, a man in a threadbare suit and thin gray carefully-combed hair reads agricultural news from a sheaf of paper: news not just of weather but of livestock auctions, grain prices, and government-subsidy deadlines.

In short, The Guest is on alien ground, apparently having shared not a single life experience with G— but eager, for TEM’s sake, to ingratiate himself in some way.

Guest: You know, I’ve always wanted to live in Vermont.

G— is silent for a long moment, extending through the end of the segment on TV, several commercials, and the start of a new segment.

G—: (immobile, arms folded, gaze fixed on TV) Why’d you want to live in Vermont?

Guest: Oh jeez, it’s just beautiful here. I mean, look outside right now. (He gestures vaguely at the window.) Seriously — could anything be more beautiful than that? (He pauses to give G— a chance to interject something, anything.) In the fall, oh my gosh, it’s beautiful in the fall. (Another pause.) And if I had enough books and a house as well-built as this one, why, I bet I could be happy living up here my whole life.

Another protracted silence. Another commercial break.

G—: You ski?

Guest: (speaking rapidly) Nope — never been on skis in my life! Actually now that I think about it snow skiing, water skiing no difference, never even held a ski in my hands, actually I’m not very athletic at all, no sir.

The silence oppresses. From the kitchen, sounds of female laughter and the clatter of tableware. The newsreader on TV seems to have started all over again: temperature and precipitation expectations for the day, records of past years—

G—: (only his mouth moving) So why’d you want to live in Vermont?

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On the Page vs. Around the Table

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From yesterday’s New York Times Book Review, we have an essay on “When Writers Speak“:

Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person. In fact, I am smarter when I’m writing. I don’t claim this merely because there is usually no one around to observe the false starts and groan-inducing sentences that make a mockery of my presumed intelligence, but because when the work is going well, I’m expressing opinions that I’ve never uttered in conversation and that otherwise might never occur to me…

I’m willing to bet that more gray matter starts quivering when I sit down to write than when I stand up to speak. In fact, if you were to do an M.R.I. of my brain right now, you would see regions of it lighting up that barely flicker when I talk. How do I know this? Because I’m writing! In fact, I’m so smart right now that I know my cerebral cortex is employing a host of neurons that are cleverly and charmingly transforming my thoughts and feelings into words. But if I were talking to you about all this, a different set of neurons would be triggered, different connections and associations would be made, and different words and phrases would be generated. In short, I’d be boring the pants off you.

All of which raises a whole lot of questions in my head (while putting a smile on my face).

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