flâneur

listening - by Ava - bookbear express

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Joan Brown, Woman Waiting in a Theatre Lobby, 1975 It was 2017. T was the one who told me I talked too much. He didn’t say it directly, he mentioned that a friend of his didn’t like me because I spent all of lunch talking about myself. I felt stung, but I told him I’d try to listen more. Of course, T himself was preoccupied with his own ideas and often monologued for hours, but I didn’t point that out. I was starting to become tactful. I worked hard on it over the next few years. How to listen. How to probe, but not too much. How to ask thoughtful questions, gentle questions, sharp…

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