I am working on a new quilt, cutting applique shapes and placing them on the design wall. This is a process that will take days. Longer, since I leave Monday for Nova Scotia to teach at the Mahone Bay Quilt Guild.

I like to listen to stories as I work so I went to the Radiolab site. I listened to a show about a woman whose heartbeat is really loud. It was very good but, warning, if you are one of those people who faint when you get a shot, this is not an episode to listen to when you are driving or operating a rotary cutter. Seriously. I didn’t find it disturbing at all, but then I can look at blood and get shots and not faint.

That same episode had an excellent story with Oliver Sacks. I suppose I should feel happy never to have needed to visit him in his office, but I would really like to know this man. It’s a good listen.

And then I listened to The Living Room. This story dovetails with my last post about talking to strangers except that this is about watching strangers. Specific strangers—on a daily basis. The narrator imagines their lives and gets it all wrong. I almost cried. This story has stuck with me and I think that most of you will be entranced.

Please note, sex is mentioned in a very upfront way in all of these stories, but sex is not the thing.

After listening to The Living Room, I am left with the knowledge that we all imagine what other peoples’ lives are like. And I think that we mostly get it wrong. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel humble, and more open to hearing what’s going on in other people’s lives.