Thursday, October 31, 2024

Communication

  “For someone who’s just come back from an event on Non-Violent Communication, you’re being remarkably argumentative this morning” Dave said on Monday.

“Really? Am I?” I said.

I was at a foundation course on NVC last weekend which was stimulating, interesting and personally very helpful. I think of it as Empathetic Conversation, but the founders of Non Violent Communication call it the latter because they see it as having uses and ramifications way beyond personal one-to-one conversations. It could be used in all kinds of situations involving conflict and negotiations. 

The other course members were warm, sympathetic and so, so nice. During one of the exercises I was telling the group about why I don’t like aging. The three things I came up with were becoming more anxious, especially about travel, not having enough energy to do all the things I want to do in a day, and losing words - by which I mean being in the middle of a sentence in a conversation and not being able to think of the word I want to use. 

This is absolutely not restricted to losing names, although that did happen very annoyingly yesterday when I was talking to my brother about Margaret Drabble’s rift with her sister and I couldn’t remember the name of her famous sister. (A.S.Byatt)

In a conversation at the weekend with other course members who I didn’t know I used the word insouciant, knowing full well what it meant, but then someone asked me to define it and I was lost for words. It’s this kind of thing that is both disconcerting and worrying.

It reminds me of a scene in a TV drama where a detective is talking to a woman with dementia and she says “I like your - what is that?” pointing to his jacket. She can’t remember the name for it. This is happening to me, but not with something concrete I can actually see - so far.

People still say to me “Aren’t you writing any more?” 

To which I reply “No, I’m a painter now.”

I’m not writing any more because I have said everything I want to say. At the moment, the things that preoccupy me are the continuing genocide in Gaza, and the American election, which are not unrelated. But otherwise I don’t have much to say except that I am pleased to be home for the winter, especially once I’ve put the garden to bed, because now I have my daylight lamp I can paint until teatime every day. 

But if you don’t hear from me very often it’s because I’m following this maxim of Charles Bukowski in his poem So You Want To Be A Writer. Here is the first stanza:




But I can share pictures with you.

Here’s a photo of the Trail from my bike ride yesterday:




And here is a photo of my visible creative mend of a hole in my favourite jeans:





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