With Valentine’s Day coming up soon, we opened our January Noodle Talk session at TASK (the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen) with a question about what the French call “amour”: “Suppose that love was not an emotion, but an actual substance, object, or imaginary place. Please describe its physical characteristics or scenic features.”
The answers ranged from the surprisingly mundane to expansive and poetic, and nearly all came with a warning:
It’s like a sponge full of holes that soaks up but also leaks.
It’s a rag that wipes things away.
It’s like a fire that keeps you warm but will burn you too.
It’s a brilliant, blinding light that’s brighter than the sun.
It’s like being on top of a mountain with a 360° unlimited view that overwhelms you. You don’t control it; it controls you. You do things that are stupid because you love that person even if they don’t love you as much.
As for metaphorical places, one participant likened it to paradise (specifically, Paris with its Eiffel Tower) while another saw a close resemblance to Camden (nice but rough).
Can love really hurt? That was a question discussed at length. One person felt strongly that love is love — a pure emanation from the heart that is wholly benevolent; whatever pain may be associated with it comes from a need or desire, not from the loving itself. It was definitely a minority view.
The same young man answered the question, “After years of futility, what have you finally given up trying to understand or do?” by saying that communication with his child’s mother had gotten so bad, he no longer even attempts to work things out with her.
“What advice would you give an extra-terrestrial being visiting Earth for the first time?” The answers, unfortunately, were not those of tourism boosters:
Turn around.
Keep moving.
Be sure to put an alarm on your spaceship.
“When was the last time you said, ‘Never again’? What’s happened since?” evoked an incident in which the storyteller became drunk, and was physically abusive to his partner. “It took me so out of character I decided not to drink again,” he said. In the six years since, he hasn’t touched a drop of liquor.
Tags: alcoholism, conversation game, conversation starters, conversation stirrers, dinner parties, family conversations, host or hostess gifts, ice breakers, love, Noodle Talk, poverty, TASK, Trenton, Trenton Area Soup Kitchen
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