Confession: I Talk To Myself

"Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself."

— Walt Whitman I have a confession to make. I talk to myself. I do it all the time. I used to be embarrassed about it, especially when someone came up behind me and caught me rambling on about whatever was on my mind that day. Now when that happens I just reply, "If I didn't talk to myself, I'd never get anything done."

A friend of mine tells people that she talks to herself because "It's nice to have a little intelligent conversation.”

Truman Capote wrote that “talking to oneself is a habit of perfectly sane people of a solitary nature.” I don't agree that you have to be solitary to talk to yourself.

Talking to myself is useful in several different ways. It's a way of being creative. I work out ideas for quilts for instance. I verbalize about patterns and how I feel about them, I choose colors and fabrics. I decide what I’ll need and then where I have to go to get it.

Sometimes I have to work out a long and complicated route, and I talk to myself on the way there, hoping it will keep me from getting lost. Usually it works, but sometimes I get lost anyway and have to talk myself back to the right way.

Don't tell Jim this, but sometimes when we argue I go off by myself and plan out my arguments.

I anticipate what he'll say and choose my words carefully.

When I have it all planned out ahead of time, I don't get angry, and I can present my feelings in a calm and rational way. Jim likes that, and I'm more likely to get my way. are not only a weak, weak, weak person but you don't know what it is you are really trying to do…You should start by reading your BIBLE to find out."

The secular: "It really doesn't help that the author put this in terms of 'sin' and 'cheating.'"

The environmentalist: "Did you know that 98 percent of pollution and destruction of habitat is caused by corporations and the rich?"

The racial: "Strange how so many militant vegans always seem to be white."

The anthropological: "Humans are designed by evolution to eat meat. Your diet will lead to neurological decline and an early death."

The counter-anthropological: "Wrong, wrong, wrong. Not designed by evolution but by Madison avenue, McDonald's, and the meat industry."

The people who were commenting on my column just started arguing with each other about everything, pretty much without reference to anything I'd written.

For example, the person who chimed in with "Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian" was immediately checkmated by someone who wrote:

"Hitler was not a vegan and that's what we're talking about."

Sometimes I write my columns by talking them out first. It helps to hear my own words out loud. Then I can tell where I need to make changes to improve the sound and the content of what I'm trying to say.

Finally, I have to hear from all those characters who live in my head: the planner who gets me through each day; the worrier, who frets about my family and their troubles and every day problems; the quilter, who represents my creative side, she fills my life with color and design; the moralist who of the radical environmentallectures me on questions of right ist mindset forget the world and wrong and helps me choose includes more than just the U.S. rightly; and all the others. Recently the Seattle City The coal burned in Asia is

Each of us carries around Council unanimously passed going into the air Americans his own cast of characters who Resolution 31379, opposing the breathe as well. Wouldn’t a provide us with ideas, help us development of coal-export true environmentalist want all solve problems, and keep us on the terminals in Washington State. nations to have healthy, clean straight and narrow path. air?These terminals would use

We need to communicate with local railroads for transporting The World Coal Associathem sometimes and talking to coal to the shore to be shipped tion highlights that about 80 ourselves is how we do it. overseas, mainly to Asian percent of electricity generated

Today you may just want to markets. in China comes from coal. If the give yourself a good talking to or However, according to the U.S. decides, as the Seattle City congratulate yourself for a job Associated Press, “mining and Council did, that coal will not well done. If I hear you, I'll know burning more coal isn’t consisbe exported through its state to what's going on, and I'll undertent with the city’s goal to fight another nation, it will not have stand. climate change,” said Councilan impact on China’s coal use.

And that's the view from member Mike O’Brien, sponsor The country will simply import Antioch Mountain. of the Seattle resolution. So the it from somewhere else. council voted the resolution Again, from an environmendown. tal standpoint, wouldn’t it be

After all, we wouldn’t want better for China, a country more any coal dust or pollution to hit dependent on coal than the the air of Seattle would we? U.S., to burn a cleaner variety of

The coal mined in Wyoming American-based coal than one and Montana, specifically in the that emits much more carbon Powder River Basin, which is the and sulfur? coal that would be transported Either way, China will burn to Asia, is considered low-sulfur the coal, and Wyoming and and low-ash coal. Montana will find customers.

Meaning, often times this coal This battle has nothing to do doesn’t have to go through a with the environment but everyrigorous process to comply with thing to do with a gutting a vital the Clean Air Act. domestic industry, despite what

It doesn’t emit near as much Seattle City Council Member carbon or sulfur as other types O’Brien says. of coal mined elsewhere in the Should the U.S. become U.S. and world. adamant about not export

Funny how sometimes those ing coal from Wyoming and