What We Talk About When We Talk ...

Oct 2 2015

What we talk about when we talk

is like the sound of scraping plates

dishes stacked and drained

blasts of water sprayed

into hot steamy suds.

In a warm kitchen

redolent of food,

ties loosened, heels kicked-off.

Where we all naturally gravitate,

balancing dessert, and coffee cups.

About not much, it turns out.

Sons and daughters

delectable gossip

risk of frost.

The state of tomatoes

a steal of a sale

at the market next week.

This is comfort food, in place of gourmet;

mac and cheese

shepherd’s pie.

This is intelligent primates

expertly grooming, strengthening bonds,

sending soothing signals

of belonging, tribe.

Flushed with food, a little high

it’s conversations that overlap

taking unexpected turns.

It’s chuckles and snorts and belly laughs

a bubbling froth of words.

It’s murmur, hubbub, gentle curse

that will hardly change the world.

Kind of like us

chatting over dinner about our day,

an idle exchange

about nothing much.

Because we gather at the communal table

to feel close;

no need to change the world,

no need to debate

God, politics, sex.

Speaking with our mouths full

our bellies warm,

our words

the salt and zest.

I tend to be a serious person, and I like conversations about big ideas. But for most of us, the content of what we say is a lot less important than the saying itself. Normal conversation is closer to grooming than the witty badinage and elevated musings of the Algonquin round-table. Like intelligent animals, but animals nonetheless, we're busy grooming each other with words: strengthening bonds, reinforcing status. Even formulaic exchanges like "how ya doin'?" followed by "fine ...and you?" are necessary signals of reassurance.

When I started his poem, I was thinking of a conversation I had with my neighbour earlier today. She was expressing her dismay with "foodies": people who obsess about every fine point of preparation, but who miss the totality of the dining experience. Because the communal table is not about the food. Rather, it's all about the company, the conversation, the togetherness: whether it's a formal dinner party (where the poem starts), or a family meal (where it moves in the penultimate stanza).

And also thinking of this sentence I recently wrote in a letter to a friend:  And I also realize that there is much to be said for silence. I’ve always admired and envied those older couples who can sit quietly together without feeling obliged to fill every awkward pause:  that they can be perfectly at ease simply with the pleasure of each other’s company.

The kitchen, of course, is the warm heart of the house. Dinner may be served in the dining room at a formally set table, but everyone (or is it mostly the women?) will inevitably adjourn to the kitchen, where we all gossip and busy ourselves, notching-open our belts and kicking-off our shoes.

The choices in the second stanza were theoretically endless. So I like how I solved it. There's family, weather, money; neighbourhood gossip; and a typical first-world complaint. About right, I'd say! And then, in the second last, the topics that are the 3rd rail of polite conversation: what else but politics, religion, sex.

Here's the key line, at least as I see it: ...that will hardly change the world. Which is why I repeated much the same thing, a few lines later. Because this is talk that doesn't have to, and never will, change the world. Which is also true of me and my big ideas: really, what difference does it make, in the grand scheme of things, what I think or say? It's all just talk, and doesn't solve anything. At best, all it does is just hammer home my powerlessness.