"Gay bar." I'm at lunch with one of the most influential people in my life, and once we're seated and starting conversation, these are the first words I hear him say? His wife explains that we are at "the local neighborhood--" and he interrupts her. So here I am, at the local neighborhood gay bar, with Daniel Quinn. The Quinns are known here: Rennie's paintings are on the wall, and whenever they are seated, the servers set the table with black napkins instead of white.
I don't know how to start a conversation, and for whatever reason Mr Quinn was not starting it either. Rennie, his wife, was more chatty, though, so we both took the back seat and let her lead the conversation. Over an hour and a half we talked about a wide range of things, so I don't remember everything we talked about. She asked me where the Barnes & Noble was in Seattle, and said they had only been to Elliott Bay Book Company & Third Place Books, for book signings. They love the Icon Grill, and that seemed to redeem their entire opinion of the city.
This is the kind of conversation we had. I was sure that my mind would go blank when I got there, so I asked people to help me think of things to talk about. Leslie gave a a dozen good ideas, and Scott provided plenty as well. I was prepared to talk about so many very different things. And we talked about Barnes & Noble.
(I was delighted that, when the subject of nook came up, Daniel Quinn had no idea what we were talking about.)
After the ebook wall had been breached, I asked if they had a large library or if they just put books back into circulation (they live within sight of a Half Price Books). They only keep books that they expect to revisit, but even so these are enough to require library stacks. Their neighbor has a nook, and loves it. THIS IS WHAT KIND OF CONVERSATION WE HAD.
Including, among other things, a lunch with Daniel Quinn, couch surfing, a personality test, my entire life, and the future of the world.
http://www.ishmael.org/Interaction/QandA/Detail.CFM?Record=667
Personally, I feel we're doing "better than expected." I've been very impressed with the ever-increasing awareness of our situation that reveals itself in books, graduate-school theses, publications of all kinds, and in every medium. To my way of thinking, a "Quinn-changed" mind is ultimately always a "self-changed" mind. It's very different in a cult; a "cult-changed" mind is NEVER "self-changed."
