Aphorisms on A Rough Relationship

“When you observe your delusions, you will know that they are baseless and not dependable.” ~ Bodhidharma

“What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”  ~ Eckhart Tolle

Your friends think I am toxic, dear: mine think you’re appalling;

When we draw our portrait, dear, it isn’t art but scrawling.

When you refuse to speak to me, you save your own impressions;

But voices in my head will long be carving new depressions.

Please don’t think I judge you for your choices… just the violence

with which you turned our conversations into brutal silence.

Talk is like a candle that survives the light of noon:

To kill a conversation after love puts out the moon.

The moon over New Orleans, reminding everybody who cares to look that even in the dark there’s no reason to stop caring about the light.

A Good Talk Spoiled: Reflection on Conversation

Reflections after an exhausting "conversation" in which my role was more or less that of the wall during a hand-ball game:

There are two ways to have a conversation.  One is a very selfish way, and it's like a golf-game.  In it, each participant thinks they're doing well if they hit the ball of their own ideas and memories and feelings as far as they can.  It doesn't matter what anybody else says or does or feels or thinks.  The 'golfer' could have the same conversation just as well if the other person were a rag-doll.

The other type of conversation is a form of love, and it's like a tennis match.  In it, each person hits an idea, a feeling, or a memory to his partner and waits for it to be hit back.  He watches and listens to the partner intently, and responds to silence not with more talk but with quiet solicitude.  When the ball is hit back, he doesn't continue his monologue like the golfer but instead responds to fact that the conversation is no longer his to do with as he wishes: instead it's a game played with another.

The golfer is wearisome and dull to others: we are no more than an audience for her monologue.  The tennis player is a joy, for she comes to us as an equal.

Self-Query: How would this conversation be different if the other participant were not here, or were somebody else?  If it wouldn't be different much, then I'm golfing.