Talking

Here’s another line from “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson (page 167)

“I wonder whether that is how we get after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking out loud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few …people we still see. When you live alone for too long the line which divides the one from the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line.”

I find myself doing this at times … surprisingly I hear myself talking out loud. A while back, one other day at work, in a shared space in which I was alone, I said something out loud and a co-worker walked in. I said “Ooops. You caught me talking to myself.” He told me that was OK … just as long as I didn’t answer myself. 🙂

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