Lemix

2022-02-06 17:22:15 Eva Hagberg Fisher, «How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship»:

Her cancer came back and I felt that I should do something because that’s what everyone else around me seemed to be doing—extra hugs and sideways head tilts and the look that said at once “I pity you and I am afraid of you,” and I would watch myself looking at her body—her thin arms and her huge butt—and I would wonder where the cancer was and where the chemo was and how she was being treated and also how it felt to be in her body.

Did cancer hurt? And I wondered why she wasn’t used to it—why it seemed like this was such a big deal for her. I’d heard her talk about chemo and surgeries and radiations, and most of all her fear of CT scans, her nervous anxiety that made her talk for longer than the four minutes we informally allotted each person, and I didn’t understand how she wasn’t used to it by now. I was used to it—to her having cancer. And I couldn’t imagine, couldn’t fathom, a life that was lived between scans, where each prospect of that whirring tube was more terrifying than the last.

(Until I joined her.)

I didn’t yet know how to be with her in a meaningful way, but I knew that I could bring food, enjoyed feeling like I was being of service, and useful, could proudly report to my spiritual guide that I had done a good deed that week, and so one Friday night I offered to bring Allison dinner from the Whole Foods near her house, and she accepted, gratefully, and I arrived, and we sat down at her kitchen table and she told me about her cancer, about where it was, and I said things like “I can’t imagine” as I slowly shook my head in the performance of baffled confusion in the face of a kind person’s illness that I’d seen others do.

“It’s everywhere in my liver,” she said, holding and stroking her right side with her right hand as with the other hand she took a bite of roast chicken, of the broccoli she loved. I didn’t even know the liver was on the right side. I didn’t know how badly cancer could hurt.

“TV on the bed?” she asked, as I cleared her plate and threw out my paper box of macaroni and cheese.

I’d only ever gotten in bed with someone I’d been having sex with. I thought of the artist Tracey Emin’s tent, embroidered with the names of, as it was titled, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, and how I’d seen it in London during the Sensation show in 1999, and how I’d assumed, of course, that everyone listed would be someone she’d had sex with, but her mother was on there, her friends. I’d never been in bed with someone, been so intimate with someone that I wasn’t trying to sleep with, and the categories, now that we were about to get in bed together, confused me. I couldn’t figure out where to slot Allison—was she a sick old woman I was helping? Was she a sick wise sage who was helping me? Was she someone I was going to have sex with?

I helped her up and we walked into the bedroom, its bed pushed to the corner, a huge TV on the wall, and every surface—the long desk, two chairs, the bookshelves, the top of the bookshelves—covered in stacks of books. Strout, the Ann/es (Patchett and Tyler), Lively, Colwin. Everything she read had the same strand of inquiry, the same question. How should we live? And the room smelled, of laundry, which she did every day, but also of a faint but bright acidity, a smell I categorized as belonging to her specifically until I smelled it again, years later, in an oncology suite bathroom, and almost fell to the floor from recognition and grief. Открыть/Комментировать

2022-02-06 17:21:58 Ещё одна книжка вроде-бы-о-дружбе (а мне кажется, что на самом деле — о смертельной болезни, борьбе с зависимостью и попытках открыться другим, чтобы научиться получать поддержку) — над началом я рыдала два дня, а остальное дочитывала, позевывая.

Мне до конца так и не стало понятно, чем меня настолько раскачала первая часть, но я сделала выписки для канала, посмотрим вместе. Триггеры: сплошные травмы по тексту.

Краткое содержание: два человека помогают друг другу справляться с жизнью неромантически. Можно назвать это и «дружбой», но для меня описанное больше похоже на платонические отношения.

Интересно почитать, как это — сближаться не для семьи, не для отношений, не для романтики. Открыть/Комментировать

2022-02-05 21:46:36 Селеста Хэдли, «Нам надо поговорить, или секреты осмысленного общения»:

Стереотипы постоянно меняются и развиваются. Всё потому, что они основаны на предположении, а не на факте.

Например, не так давно розовый считался мужским цветом. В статье, вышедшей в июне 1918 года в журнале Ladies Home Journal, говорилось о том, что «общепринятым является выбор розового цвета для мальчиков и голубого — для девочек. Ведь розовый цвет, означающий решительность и силу, больше подходит мальчикам, в то время как более нежный и изысканный голубой цвет лучше подойдёт девочкам».

Сегодня преобладает противоположный гендерный стереотип. Несмотря на то, что пример с цветом детского одеяла может показаться несерьезным, сама его смехотворность демонстрирует хрупкость наших стереотипов.

Когда мы начинаем разговор, все наши предубеждения, большая часть которых не основана на фактах, начинают влиять на исход общения. Независимо от того, насколько правильным вам сейчас кажется ваше личное мнение, учтите: оно может быть косным стереотипом, вовсе не «истиной».

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2022-02-05 15:39:52 Собрали вместе с Ирой @syiroejkina советики по индийским фильмам:

https://nonidealstories.ru/indian-movies/ Открыть/Комментировать

2022-02-04 18:44:02 Авни Доши, «Жженый сахар»:

Мама велела мне ждать на детской площадке у входа, пока она будет звонить. Я легла на траву у подножия металлической горки и уставилась в небо.

Я наблюдала, как птицы садятся на провода, протянувшиеся над деревьями, и качаются, как на качелях. На детской площадке было тихо и пусто. Вокруг никого. Ни единой живой души.

Я знала, что дети любят играть на таких площадках, но сама никогда не играла и не совсем понимала, что надо делать. Я решила, что ненавижу детские площадки, странные металлические сооружения без смысла и цели. Ненавидеть детские площадки было легко и приятно, ненависть задавала понятное направление моему смутному недовольству, закрепляла его на конкретном предмете, который можно увидеть глазами и потрогать руками.

Этот прием я использую до сих пор, когда мне неуютно или тревожно. Я отвергаю сама, чтобы не быть отвергнутой.

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2022-02-02 16:28:34 Priya Parker, «The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters»:

Think back to the last several gatherings you hosted or attended. A networking event. A book club. A volunteer training. If I were to ask you (or your host) the purpose behind each of those gatherings, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear what I often do in my work: what you were supposed to do at the gathering.

That networking night, you might tell me, was intended to help people in similar fields meet one another.

The book club was organized to get us to read a book together.

The volunteer training was arranged to train the volunteers.

The purpose of your church’s small group was to allow church members to meet in smaller groups.

This is the circular logic that guides the planning of many of our gatherings.

“What’s wrong with that?” you might say. Isn’t the purpose of a networking night to network?

Yes, to a point. But if that’s all it is, it will likely proceed like so many other networking nights: people wandering around and awkwardly passing out their business cards, practicing their elevator pitches on anyone with a pulse who’ll listen. It will likely not dazzle anyone. It may even make some guests feel awkward or insecure—and swear off future networking nights.
When we don’t examine the deeper assumptions behind why we gather, we end up skipping too quickly to replicating old, staid formats of gathering. And we forgo the possibility of creating something memorable, even transformative.

For example, in planning that networking night, what if the organizers paused to ask questions like these: Is our purpose for this gathering to help people find business partners or clients? Is the purpose to help guests sell their wares or to get advice on the weaker parts of their product? Is the purpose of the night to help as many people from different fields make as many new connections as possible, or to build a tribe that would want to meet again? The answers to these questions should lead to very different formats of an evening.

When we gather, we often make the mistake of conflating category with purpose. We outsource our decisions and our assumptions about our gatherings to people, formats, and contexts that are not our own. We get lulled into the false belief that knowing the category of the gathering—the board meeting, workshop, birthday party, town hall—will be instructive to designing it. But we often choose the template—and the activities and structure that go along with it—before we’re clear on our purpose. And we do this just as much for gatherings that are as low stakes as a networking night as for gatherings that are as high stakes as a court trial.

And it’s not just in public gatherings like courtrooms where we follow traditional formats of gathering unquestioningly. A category can masquerade as a purpose just as easily, if not more so, in our personal gatherings, particularly those that have become ritualized over time. Thanks to ancient traditions and modern Pinterest boards, it’s easy to overlook the step of choosing a vivid purpose for your personal gathering.

Just as many of us assume we know what a trial is for, so we think we know what a birthday party is for, or what a wedding is for, or even what a dinner party is for. And so our personal gatherings tend not to serve the purposes that they could. When you skip asking yourself what the purpose of your birthday party is in this specific year, for where you are at this present moment in your life, for example, you forsake an opportunity for your gathering to be a source of growth, support, guidance, and inspiration tailored to the time in which you and others find yourselves.

Before you gather, ask yourself: Why is this gathering different from all my other gatherings? Why is it different from other people’s gatherings of the same general type? What is this that other gatherings aren’t?

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2022-02-02 16:28:30 Послушала интервью в подкасте Брене с авторкой книжки о том, как создавать, вести и «настраивать» встречи — и побежала читать книжку. Хочу поделиться кусочком о том, почему важно даже для ритуализированных собраний всякий раз задумываться, в чем смысл каждого конкретного события. Открыть/Комментировать