1. Meagan, Patrick, Debbie, and I fell into a long and involved discussion this afternoon about having friends and family who are alcoholic. It's a difficult subject that we discussed calmly, thoughtfully, and honestly. As our discussion wound down and Patrick and Meagan left to have a bite to eat at Garrenteed BBQ and Debbie left to eventually meet up with Patrick and Meagan at The Lounge, I was tired. I have enjoyed the conversations I've had over the last few days with Terry, Ed, Patrick, Meagan, and Debbie. At the same time, over the last couple of months I've been spending a lot of time apart from people and suddenly having company and expending energy in multiple conversations has taxed me (in a good way), but it's good to be starting to get back into a bit of social life again.
2. I needed a late afternoon retreat to the bedroom and a little bit of a nap because at 7:00 Christy, Carol, and Paul came over and all of us got together on the patio for snacks, crackers, dips, chips, that sort of thing. Patrick unpacked his powerful (to me) telescope and different people took turns peering at the moon. We had a fun discussion of what Carol and Debbie have observed, working with children, the children's cultural frames of reference are as they absorb stories, characters, songs, and other aspects of YouTube videos, video games, and other sources of cultural influence.
Not a single word of judgment was uttered. Rather, we discussed this subject in the spirit of fascination.
3. We also had a long discussion of books. I subscribe to Leah Sottile's Substack blog. In response to a recent New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Sottile wrote a response outlining where she thought the list fell short and she offered a list of her own books. Sottile's list focused quite a bit on writers from U. S. West and, I think we all agreed, hers was a gravely serious list of books dealing with difficult subjects ranging from Ruby Ridge to Columbine to missing indigenous persons and more. I admire Leah Sottile and, in keeping with my admiration of her writing and her podcasts, I immediately wanted to start getting a hold of the books on her list and read away. I'll just have to decide where to start and see how far I get!
(I've already read one of the books she listed: Jess Walter's superb Spokane tale, The Cool Millions.)
We also extended the conversation Debbie, Patrick, Meagan and I had started in the afternoon. We talked about the strong impulse it's easy to feel to try to get friends in crisis to change their ways, but how difficult or even futile it is to persuade these friends to change, leaving us to witness their demise.
We can be present with these people, but rarely, if ever, do we have the magic words that convince the persons in crisis to stop being self-neglecting or self-destructive.
No comments:
Post a Comment