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\nIn many parts of the world, as we recorded this conversation, we're having to take up practices of physical separation from one another in order to keep each other safe. But there are ways, even when we are physically distant, that we can come into a deeper, more full contact with one another than we might usually experience, and such contact with one another's depth is also a return to ourselves. A conversation about living and relating to others and ourselves in a loving, receptive, contactful way, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
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\nThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We\u2019re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
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\n\n\nHere's our source for this week, chosen for us by Lizzie:
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\nThe Affliction
\nby Marie Howe
\nwww.mariehowe.com
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\nWhen I walked across a room I saw myself walking
\nas if I were someone else,
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\nwhen I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress,
\nas if I were in a movie.
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\nIt\u2019s what I thought you saw when you looked at me.
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\nSo when I looked at you, I didn\u2019t see you
\nI saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.
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\nI called that outside\u2014watching. Well I didn\u2019t call it anything
\nwhen it happened all the time.
\n
\nBut one morning after I stopped the pills\u2014standing in the kitchen
\nfor one second I was inside looking out.
\n
\nThen I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.
\nWould it happen again? It did, a few days later.
\n
\nMy friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen door
\nand suddenly I was inside and I saw her.
\nI looked out from my own eyes
\nand I saw: her eyes: blue gray transparent
\nand inside them: Wendy herself!
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\nThen I was outside again,
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\nand Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,
\nas if Nothing Had Happened.
\nShe hadn\u2019t noticed. She hadn\u2019t known that I\u2019d Been There
\nfor Maybe 40 Seconds,
\nand that then I was Gone.
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\nShe hadn\u2019t noticed that I Hadn\u2019t Been There for Months,
\nyears, the entire time she\u2019d known me.
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\nI needn\u2019t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;
\nshe had not Noticed The Difference.
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\nThis happened on and off for weeks,
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\nand then I was looking at my old friend John:
\n: suddenly I was in: and I saw him,
\n
\n
\nand he: (and this was almost unbearable)
\nhe saw me see him,
\nand I saw him see me.
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\nHe said something like, You\u2019re going to be ok now,
\nor, It\u2019s been difficult hasn\u2019t it,
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\nbut what he said mattered only a little.
\nWe met\u2014in our mutual gaze\u2014in between
\n
\na third place I\u2019d not yet been.