I tell stories about things that have happened to me. I tell
these stories to other people. I have short versions and long versions of my
stories.
The stories range from funny to banal to extremely sad. This
is the stuff my life is made of.
There are the stories I write. There are the stories I tell.
There are the stories I don't write or tell but carry.
All three kinds of stories help me make sense of my life.
They give it a narrative. They infuse it with something.
This is true for you too.
I think about the stories. Not the details. Not who
survived, who died, who taught me by teaching, who taught me by betrayal, who
helped raise me, who might have helped but didn't.
I don't think about the places I've lived, apartments still
the same in my mind's eye. I don't think about 1993. I'm not thinking of the words
that lifted me up and the words that still smart.
I think about the telling of stories and the story of
stories.
These stories belong to me. I take ownership of them. Your
stories are yours.
Feeling a deep attachment to the stories we tell ourselves
is natural.
But now I think beyond that.
I think about the stories that are in my mind - especially
those. There are some old stories.
I step outside of myself. What if the story of what happened
is told a different way? What if Joyce Carol Oates told my story instead of me?
Annie Dillard, Jane Smiley, Anne Lamott, Mary Karr?
Would they come to different conclusions? Imbue it with
different meanings? They could skip over certain parts and turn the focus on
others. I'm not saying they'd make stuff up. Their truth would just be
different. The truth would be the truth through their lens.
What if Raymond Carver, Frank McCourt or JD Salinger weren't
dead? Jodi Picoult would have a field day with some stuff that's happened to
me.
Someone else might spend a page and a half describing the
art on the walls the day I met Jeremy for the first time. Sure, I noticed the
art. But the way I remember it was that
I was wearing a red and white striped double front and back V-neck shirt and
this cute tall guy came over to say hi with a really big smile.
I also wonder how non-writers would tell this story or that.
I think about myself in the third person sometimes.
Something crappy will happen. But then I'll work with that construct. I'll come
up with some other way of looking at it. Social workers call this process
re-framing. I'm good at it now.
I help others do that with their stories. Somebody says I
screwed up. I say, no you didn't. You did great considering the hurricane, the
diagnosis, the divorce. For the love of god. You were 14 years old and no one
was minding you.
Sometimes, I'd like to write someone else's story my own
way. Let's say you're telling a story. There's pathos. There's tragedy. There's
betrayal. There are circumstances that work against you at every turn.
I can't tell you this. But I don't see it the same way.
If he hadn't left, you wouldn't be with this guy. If you
weren't fired, shown the door, made to pack your desk in a cardboard box, you
would have never started your own business. You can't play basketball anymore
but you were accepted to graduate school. You were no Michael Jordan anyway.
The one that got away is the one that got away. This is the
house you're supposed to live in. This is the child meant for you. The music
business would have eaten you alive.
This isn't the life you planned. I've gone ahead and re-framed
it. From where I sit it's looking pretty good.
Maybe you're in the middle of it. Live your way into
different treatments of this material that is your life. Know that you don't
know precisely where this is going, but try things on for size.
Sometimes things happen to you that are so bad that there's
nothing to say except I'm sorry. There's no re-framing. I've got nothing.
There's this other thing that happens. You tell me a story. The telling is
sculptural in that you recount it from different sides. It's complex. It
sparkles. Raconteur is the wrong word for what you are. Artist seems right.
You hold me rapt in the perfection of your narrative. I eat out of the palm of your hand. I
wouldn't change a thing. You should write a book, if you haven't already.
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