Serious Conversation

[cantdog]

I hear that. A true friend is a deeply felt call on the soul. I saw some people who were doing very well in the Chicago theater scene come back to New England. Let us face facts. New England is not the same as Chicago for theater. But their real friends were cut off from them. I love the fact that I can see them now, pop down for a weekend. I'm one of the people for whom they came back, even though it makes me feel a little guilty. They're doing even better now than they did then, well enough to plan a house of their own and a family, fairly soon.

But the opportunities in a place like Chicago are an order of magnitude better. They feel like the choice they made was a good one, all the same. Maybe you'll go back and feel as they do, but I hope you find, instead, a situation in California which will remunerate you so that you can afford frequent return visits to those you miss. Live in The Good Place and still see those people who tug at you.

cantdog

 

[LadyJeanne]

I hear that. A true friend is a deeply felt call on the soul. I saw some people who were doing very well in the Chicago theater scene come back to New England. Let us face facts. New England is not the same as Chicago for theater. But their real friends were cut off from them. I love the fact that I can see them now, pop down for a weekend. I'm one of the people for whom they came back, even though it makes me feel a little guilty. They're doing even better now than they did then, well enough to plan a house of their own and a family, fairly soon.

But the opportunities in a place like Chicago are an order of magnitude better. They feel like the choice they made was a good one, all the same. Maybe you'll go back and feel as they do, but I hope you find, instead, a situation in California which will remunerate you so that you can afford frequent return visits to those you miss. Live in The Good Place and still see those people who tug at you.

cantdog

I was lucky enough to have exactly while I've been out here - a job that had me traveling all the time so frequent flyer miles and visits home were easy. Both the traveling for work and the visiting of friends across the country made me see that the only reasons I call California home are the landscape, the weather, and that's where my cat lives. I guess that might no longer be enough...the Chicago tundra may be frozen (or hot and humid and full of mosquitos), but the hearts are warm.

 

[cantdog]

Sit on the idea a while. You'll know. Set up a situation you can step into when you get there, beforehand, if you do return. There's time. And while you arrange matters, you'll be in No Cal.

I like northern people, myself. Not that there aren't good people everywhere; what I'm talking about underlies their actual personalities. I have been extraordinarily fortunate with North Carolina, never meeting a native of the place who wasn't first class. But growing up where the world is essentially hostile to human beings lays a mark on the spirit. A sweet warm place affects you a different way, as though the world were made for you, and your decisions could be made without a lot of long-term thought about it. At bottom, I prefer northern people's edge to the southern casualness, I guess. It certainly was a factor when I decided where to strike roots.

The north is the home of freethinkers, too. Southern universities have spent a hundred fifty years canning professors for heresy and Darwinism. It's not just a rural versus urban thing in the eastern half of the country.

 

[Remec]

Do you think that George Eliot sold out to conventional morality and sentimentality in her ending for 'Mill on the Floss' or did she just run out of ideas and write the first ending that came to mind?

Discuss, with quotations, and consider whether a Dada-ist approach might have produced a more surrealist climax. Do not forget the Marxist view of the novel.

Sorry...I must admit to not being familiar with anything beyond "Silas Marner" and "Middlemarch". And even those I've not actually read all the way through.
<looking about for my Cliff Notes and Classics Illustrated comic>