Swish

I’m sort of obsessed with stories. If find them to be a most profound sort of medicine that our entire species rests on.

The healing power of stories is not a new or amazing discovery though. Storytelling is older than time and way older than the books we read. Humans are the only living things - the only animals that can carry a story, adopt it, live it, and form community around the imaginary thing that is a story. 

I’ve been writing a lot lately. Every day. It is just for me and for the practice of it and in there I am seeing a bunch of rubbish but also some glimmers of gold. I like watching basketball - the Warriors are my team - and I heard once that Steph Curry makes so many threes but he misses so many more - meaning, basically he shoots and shoots and shoots. He just keeps shooting. I figure the writing is the same way. As long as I keep writing every day, this thing that I want is going to come out. Swish.

The trouble here and everywhere for not just me, but for everyone is that sneaky little bugger. The bugger is that voice that comes in, usually during times of adversity. You know it as well as I know it. It's the judge part of us, the anti-social part of us, it is the part of us that wants to keep us from changing or growing. It wants to fuck up your shit. It tells you everything you want is impossible. That bugger comes rushing in and tells me I am too late, too old, too tired to dream big and live. 

In my writing and in my day to day there is a lot of this voice. There is a lot of me wrestling it and listening to it and doing my damndest not it let me to stop shooting. Now the thing I realize about the annoying little bugger is that I kind of need it. If I haven’t been in this annoying relationship with that voice that sits on my shoulder whispering," you can’t you won’t you never will,” then I would never know what it feels like to do it any way.

I literally just wrote about how the pain and adversity turns out to be the stuff I am most grateful for. And this whole thing is exactly why. What would stories would we have to tell without it? What would we have created without problems to solve, adversity to overcome? 

In this way - the bugger is not only an absolutely essential part of this experience, but it is necessary as the driving force of all creativity. And that’s the truth - if you can be willing and open enough to admit it. And if you want to decide that you can accept this as a means of expanding your world view then you have to be willing to let yourself fuck up - a lot. There is no doing it perfectly because it will undermine what you are even doing. How many discoveries were a result of fuck-ups? In this way - this process of messing shit up becomes so intimate and vulnerable and it becomes deep and - lets face it, scary. Because there you are standing naked in the process of “what if I mess this up?” to “I better mess this up!” Vulnerability - full honesty - Intimacy - is the driving force of this CREATIVE LOVING COMPASSIONATE world. And - it gives us stories to tell around the fire...Swish.

Examining ourselves feels like the biggest universe there is to explore.

I was laying in the dentists chair for a routine cleaning and they have a tv on the ceiling. They had a show on there about the magnificence of the universe - one of those beautiful ones narrated by Morgan Freeman or something. And it was about the journey of the sea turtle and how the seaweed they eat is mineralized by stardust and it is essential for the growth of their little baby sea turtles. A bit of a ramble but the point I’m trying to make it that its all the same. And for me I like to get to the nectar. I’m incredibly curious about what the actual fuck we are doing here on this planet. I know it’s not just to make money and have sex and buy a lot of things. 

Excerpt from my journal:

So much of rewriting is about listening. Just like if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it fall, it’s fall comes into question - the same with a story. Right? If no one is around to hear the story, did the story get told? For me, it took listening to my own. Sharing them - for sure. But really listening to it as I told it and lived - again and again and again. 

When I listen sometimes I wonder who’s story I am telling. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like mine anymore. Sometimes it feels like so much mine and sparks of emotion bubble up as I see and feel and hear other stories from my day to day life become a full on soapy bath of bubbles of “oh! That’s me there!” I don’t always like it when I see me in a story doing something some part of me isn’t sure she likes. Sometimes I’m so in a story that I sit and can’t see my way out of it. Sometimes - even though my body feels heavy and slow and it resembles a square peg trying to fit into a round hole - I try to force it. I try to wrap myself in the story too small for this growing me. Sometimes I start to cry even before the story starts to leave my lips and I’m sharing. Sometimes the story has me like that where the floodgates open when I have the courage to speak it and … pop … it gets released a little. 

All the time, I am learning to listen to it all. The stories that I wrap around myself that fit - and feel like spring sprung up all over my body like little fresh flowers and grasses popping up through my skin - so alive and tender and ready for however long this spring will dance in the lighted awareness. I listen to those. I also listen to the ones that feel like me standing in front of a mirror. Naked and critical of every dimple and squish, every crease and puff. Those stories feel like a prison but I listen anyway because when they are done being told for the time being, l remember to tell them I love them. The squish, dimple, crease, and puff. 

I listen to the sparks of story that make me bubble with anger and rage. The stories that seem to draw out my finger and furiously point it away from me. I listen to ones that go a little bit like they are told by that poor little girl who is so certain that she has been wronged or is not good enough or has somehow been forgotten. When I listen closely, it is clearer to see the current that beats through those like the steady heart beat in my own chest. I’m scared it says. 

I also listen to the stories of abuse. The shame that lingers between the words finds its way to my heart and I listen closely while every cell in my body can’t help but send its love. 

When that happens - when the heart in my body and the life in my cells takes over - I listen the best. I’m not listening with my mind or my ears. I am listening with my life. I am listening with my pain and emotion. I am listening with the glue of a billion people, just like me, living and breathing and moving through stories upon stories upon stories.