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.
I 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?
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ReplyDeleteUnexpectedly, almost everyone wants to talk to a family member.
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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