Livresse at Powell's City of Books

Livresse is visiting the USA and came all the way down to Portland on the train from Seattle. We met for the first time and parted as if we’d been friends for years. She’s French by birth, Scottish by propinquity, and has a fascinating French-Scottish accent as well as politics I totally relate to. We talked about some of our favorite Blippers: perhaps your ears were burning (you know who you are). She’s married to SparseRunner,  mother of two brilliant young women who are doing work the world needs, and companion to Django. Where we connected most deeply was on the subject of books.

Like me, she was bed-ridden for a piece of her childhood, and she fell in love with books as a way out of confinement and into the lives, travels, and adventures of characters as real to her as the people in her family. She speaks with passion and poetry about how books build resilience and connection. Books lift us out of the provinces we are born in. 

We talked about theatre, empathy, libraries, poverty, climate change, governments…about Marshall Rosenberg’s theory that “Every message, regardless of form or content, is an expression of a need.” We could have gone on talking, but she had to get back to Seattle for a birthday celebration with one of SparseRunner’s colleagues. I was sad to see her go, but happy we had this day.

My camera is still not right. I think Helpix identified the problem, but I haven’t yet figured out how to rectify it. Livresse made a photo of me with her phone that is much clearer than this one I made of her with my camera, and it makes me wonder why anybody uses a camera any more.