Mary Lou Sanelli
A few weeks back a friend texted me to say how lonely she is.
She didn’t say she was lonely. She said how little enthusiasm she has for her work or for “anything, really.” She has no steam. She is always tired.
My training as a dancer has made me sensitive to the pitch and tone of all things; to how closely we have to pay attention to hear not only what someone is saying, but what they are trying to say. “Why don’t I give you a call?” I wrote back, fulfilling a promise I made to myself the day I met Mary.
And because these days I write only what I enjoy writing, and by doing so I have the writing life I have always wanted, I was immediately gratified by meeting Mary. What writer wouldn’t be?
Mary is the reason the reason I am taking my voice back, something that feels necessary for my well-being. I don’t think texts are enough for important conversations, so I will no longer let myself think that they are. I know people enable dictation and talk into their phones, creating texts the length of a page, and I’ve vowed not to be one of them.
Despite current trends, I am coming to terms with the fact that if our voices are to be heard, they must be spoken. Aloud. To someone who will listen. And we are going to have to be adamant about this because there is so much money to be made by keeping us communicating solely on our devices. All you have to do is watch the documentary The Social Dilemma to understand why.
A neighbor told me to watch it like he meant it, which he did.
The film isn’t overly confessional, as I recall, but it did confirm that we may have a societal problem when the very software engineers who developed our social media platforms admit they don’t want their own children to use them. Watching it felt a bit like when I was 15 and just realizing something about my life – that it is actually my life.
As soon as my friend answered, it was pretty clear she had likely spent too much time alone since the death of her partner, so that she talked on and on, as if propelled by the sound of her own voice. I feared I’d made a mistake. She is grieving. She is righting herself. I kept trying to interject, and kept failing. So I decided just to listen.
But this amount of listening takes time. More time than a lot of us have in a day. Yet the image of her sitting on her couch alone and obviously devastated, urged making the time right out of me.
Eventually our conversation took on a more natural give and take.
When I spotted Mary sitting on a bench near the shoreline, I’d just come from a chance encounter with a coyote: Our eyes met, then we both looked forward in the direction where I was cycling and he was running, then we looked over at each other again. We did this back and forth one more time before the grasses made a crisp, snapping noise as he tore through the brush.
Mary was reserved at first. But I had to tell someone about that coyote – and with that, everything changed.
Just offshore, two herons stood motionless as our conversation led to Mary’s assessment of present day Seattle (I was pretty blown away by how closely she follows urban policy making), and to Kamala Harris. “Well,” she said, “we’ll see.”
Everything she implied by those three words fed my fear of what November could bring. I tried to ignore the butterflies in my chest, knowing what looms. But you get in trouble pretty quickly if you assume what someone’s politics are. I sat quietly, thinking how our chat up until then never had me thinking right or left. I thought how most of us mistrust extremes in general, how some discussions revitalize us, and I thought that we always have to listen to one side to get to the other, and be sure to listen again.
One of the herons speared a small, silvery fish. Sometimes I think the most valuable thing I’ve learned up until now, the one thing that has really stuck, is simply to breathe in moments like these. They remind how good it feels to do something for its own sake. Like most writers, I long to write. But I will do most anything for time away from the routine of the desk.
Mary said I’d be inspired by our sitting together, that I’d know just what to write when I got home.
Actually this piece was pretty much written before I got home. Mary began it the moment she wanted to hear more about “my” coyote.
And my friend who is having a hard time?
I hope she is a little less lonely now that all those words locked inside of her found their way out to be heard by us both.
Mary Lou Sanelli's newest title, In So Many Words, is recently released. Please ask for it at your favorite independent bookstore, and help her celebrate at Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park) on Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. or stop by her signing booth at the upcoming Italian Festival Sept. 28 and 29. www.marylousanelli.com