Sunday, December 11, 2016

Who Would You Like to Talk to and What About?

I found this question and answer pasted into my journal from March 21, 1991.  I was playing "Postcard Challenge." The game involved asking each other questions.  The answer would be a postcard with an image, words, and a new questions.

Image result for with love from hell Matt GroeningI had photocopied the non-picture side of the postcard and taped it into my journal. I don't know what the picture was, but it was from this postcard book.

Who did I want to talk to in 1991?  Here's my answer:
1.  Moses:  I'd ask him what that burning bush was like.
2.  Jesus:  I'd ask him what he meant actually - what he really wanted.
3.  Buddha:  Perhaps he'd explain his experience to me
4, 5,  & 6.:  Jefferson, Danton, Marat, and Cromwell.  I'd like to talk about their revolutions.
7 & 8:  Confucius and Lao Tzu:  I'd like to know what they think it's all about.
9.  Shakespeare:  I'd like to know his feelings about love and marriage, writing, inspiration, magic, The Tempest, King Lear, and so on.  Ideally, we would talk for a long, long while.
10.  Ghandi, Thoreau, Golda Meir
11.  Abby Hoffman, John Lennon, Mozart.
12.  Akhenaten, Pericles, Socrates, Plato.

Actually, if I could talk to one person, I'd talk to my father who died January 1, 1969.
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That was my answer 25 years ago. It might be different now.

Who would you like to talk to and what about?

2 comments:

  1. Many comments to this post are here: https://hubski.com/pub/364381

    Unexpectedly, almost everyone wants to talk to a family member.

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  2. I would also like to talk to a family member: my great-grandmother Mary Becker Axelrod, who died in 1962. I knew and loved her (I was 18 when she died), but never asked her about what her life as a girl was like, and why she stayed behind for a few years when her family came to the U.S. from Russia (which I now know was Lithuania), what she did there, why she came alone at 14-- and how she saw the world, love, life. Also I'd like to talk to my dad, who died in 1993 but lost his language 9 years before. For a writer to talk to, Adrienne Rich, poet and essayist -- about being honest and telling the truth, as well as about writing. And I'd like to reconnect with poet June Jordan (whom I worked with in the late 60's, and who died in 2002, just before I tried to email her), for the same reasons as Adrienne.

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