An exercise in dialogue: You have a guy walking down the street, and it’s cold, and you’ve always wanted a leather topcoat, so you give him one. Then you follow him down the street. Describe what you see, and listen carefully. 

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

He’s smoking. He stops, puts his foot up against the wall behind him, exhales the smoke, looks sideways at me as I approach. He rolls up the sleeves. Looks at the light above his head. Harvey is illumined on the brick wall. I point to the rabbit. 

“I want to talk to him.” 

“Whatever you want to say to him, you can say to me,” he says and spits bits of cigarette ash on the ground. 

“I don’t know if I have anything to say. I just want to hang. Be near. Have him there.” 

“How do you know he’s not?” 

“I don’t I guess. Why this dialogue?” 

He shrugs his shoulders. 

“What is this heart sensation?” 

He drops the cigarette and steps on it with his nice, black leather shoes. He walks. I follow him. There’s one point of light that follows as we walk as if we’re on stage. We keep walking. 

“I feel ok when I’m with you. I don’t have so many questions.” 

(Hours later: After a severe panic attack, paramedics, ER, and the consensus being: There’s nothing wrong with you, I’m back at the writing desk.) 

“What did you do that for?” I ask the cigarette man. 

“You keep looking to me or him, but what about you?” 

“What about me?” 

“You’re creating us, this world.” 

“I get bored. I like company. My husband is not always good company.” 

“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

“How I don’t have control. Not always.” 

“What do you want all that control for? You think you’ll live forever.” 

“I know I won’t, but there’s a desire to cling/preserve the body. It hurts to cling.” 

“You’ve got all the answers. I’m just a wall prompted by a writing exercise.” 

“I don’t know where to put my focus. Even after all that, my eyes are still scattering trying to see where to land.” 

“You seem to be focusing on this just fine.” 

“Well, that’s what’s showing up. And I got no clue what to do with this. All my outlets seem like dead ends. Projects going nowhere. Not sure why I do any of these other things. Sometimes they seem to be a good way to pass the time. Maybe I’ll get work out of all these projects. 

“So I’m working hard just to get more work while things of form are collapsing all around me, including my body. Back to business my apartment said to me when I got back from the hospital. The world isn’t asking more of me than an occasional email check for work, deposit the money in the right places, respond to family occasionally, walk and do yoga, do a little music with my husband. 

“But then I’ll get these intense desires to work on something or other. They come in like boisterous party animals who I enjoy frolicking with while they’re around but then when they’re ready to go, they just leave without saying goodbye. So I look for them for a bit, trying to see if they’re hiding.

“Even if I do find them, I feel like they don’t want me around anymore, like I’m a nuisance and I should go play by myself for a while. When they come back again, it’s like the time in between never happened. They can’t even remember it. 

“Round and round it goes. Good thing no one is sitting around waiting for consistency from me. So, writing copy for a living would be a bad choice. Here today, gone tomorrow. Subbing still works with that formula though. Projects like books, music, freelance practice, and other bursts of enthusiasm also work.

“You’re a very good listener.”

“As long as I have one of these.” He reaches for another cigarette. 

“How do I get as chill as you? You seem to be happy just walking, being, smoking. I can see your place now: a one bedroom, upstairs. It’s dark. You don’t spend too much time there. There’s an armchair in the corner by the window. The couch is across against the wall. A coffee table. A TV that you don’t watch very often, but will turn on here and there.

“There’s a kitchenette. Not much in the fridge. The bedroom is tidy, bed made. Another chair in the corner where you lay out that suit you’re wearing. Not much in way of color in your closet. You live like a monk, move like a secret agent, talk like a guru. Who are you?” 

“Whoever you want me to be.” 

“You also go to diners a lot. You like a cup of coffee and can milk that coffee for hours. Maybe you’re reading something or maybe you’re just sitting there, looking like you’re thinking, but you’re not thinking much at all, are you? You just try to blend in. 

“Even now you’re looking at me with that clear face, knowing eyes, serene & unperturbed. We’re at the diner together, sitting across from each other. You have your hands crossed with your chin resting on them. 

“I wish to discover your secret. No, I wish to be the secret I’m seeing in you. I want you to tell me what I need to hear. “

“Right there. You’re like a hungry ghost always looking for some answer. You see me as this mysterious creature who’s keeping secrets from you, lurking around peacefully without a care or need in the world. You see that as the position of done. ‘Now, that man has got it and I want to have what he has,’ you think. You feel inadequate that’s why you keep looking for something to do, the right thing. If only you had this one right thing to do, then all your fear and problems would go away.”