4 Comments
author

I read my piece back and didn’t want people to think I was oversimplifying, making it sound too syrupy. I’m sure she still has stuff to deal with, as we all do. I do sometimes see (too much?) good when others don’t.

I remember years ago showing someone a photo I’d taken of a dog on a sunset beach. I’d loved the way I’d captured the silhouette, the colours… Until she pointed out, her being a dog owner, that it was gearing up to take a shit.

“No…..sorry, looks like he’s straining, Julie…” makes me laugh remembering that😂

Expand full comment
founding

This one really got me thinking. You can have picture of a rose in bloom or with it’s petals decaying. You can define someone by their most glowing of social media posts or their most private of fuck-ups. Pharmaceutical companies will deliberately select surrogate end points for their vaccine trials as soon as they see a positive signal because they know that the longer they leave them, the more diminishing the data returns.

Parenthood, careers, marriage, divorce - are these beginnings or endings? Burdens or liberations? Are they all just as insignificant to the cosmos or all just as potentially meaningful?

What can life be other than finding our own meanings, telling our own stories? Even if we accept that these are just constructs then they may as well be as filled with hope and beauty as we can make them. But neither can the stories just be lies. They need enough grounding in reality that they don’t leave us feeling unconvinced and empty.

I’m glad that there are writers like you who can act as our guides in this way.

Thanks again.

Expand full comment
author

Yes. One of the best things I ever read (and I can’t for the life of me remember where) was about the story never ending and how we can check in at a certain time and wrap things up as bad or good but truthfully life is all those things. If I check in next week and she’s got cancer, will I still see her story as happy? If I find out one day that she’d made all the stories up about her ex, would it still mean the same?

As with roses, lives have many layers and can look differently depending how we see them.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
November 3, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
author

I think we’re both in different places now and that’s cool. Her parting words were “please do not contact me again.”

Some things aren’t forever are they? I wish her well.

Expand full comment