In high school, I’d been set free to take French classes at the university. Waiting in the library to be picked up, I wandered and read. On a physical level I was hungry for more than stories. I didn’t eat much breakfast and found the atmosphere at school non-conducive to lunch. Like many students locked into what seemed an alien rhythm, I existed in a tattered state.
Posts filed under Storytelling
The Past Rarely Stays in the Past
Sometimes it’s hard to uncover the truth about past events. Other times the past reveals its truths almost unbidden. Either way, the past rarely stays only in the past.
A Sprinkle of Laughter, A Smattering of Grace – Applying Laughter in Challenging Situations
There’s an old school pop song where the lyrics say, “The men all pause when I walk into a room.” After a certain age, those lyrics take on a whole new meaning. What I hear now is MEN-O-PAUSE. I’ve gotten Men-o-pause when I walk into a room. And that’s when I began to take a non-traditional approach to trudging through the trenches of menopause—by sprinkling it with humor.
The Whimsical World of David Zinn
If you are observant enough, careful enough, curious enough, there is an entire world underfoot waiting to be discovered. It is a world nestled in ours but unlike ours—an illusionistic wonderland etched in chalk by Ann Arbor’s neighborhood “chalk man.” It’s a reality only visible to those who are looking for it amongst the jumble of the mundane. But in this world, if you are lucky enough to stumble across it, one rule remains the same as ours: things will not, cannot, last forever. Artist David Zinn says that’s the point.
Nocturne
One Halloween, the night when barriers are said to dissolve between dimensions, as perhaps they do every night, my friend Marin and I took a ceremonial walk after dark through Bird Hills Nature Area. We stopped to read poetry and tell dreams at places we knew in the forest.
Connecting Through Story
Joyous connection is the very stuff of story. The rise of social media, the popularity of The Moth, TED Talks, and StoryCorps, all point to the importance of story in our daily lives. Story connects us to our shared history. Personal stories of life today are cathartic for the teller, and studies show that the brain relaxes when it makes a coherent narrative out of something chaotic. They can be healing for the teller and audience alike, but story has a much broader historical significance as well. It not only helps us to understand earlier events, but also to understand the hopes, beliefs, and dreams of those who lived through those events. Story is a gift of joyous connection sent to us from times past.
City of Crows
I’m preparing to leave a corvid hurly-burly. Beneath its restless swirl I lean against an oak tree, attempting to be unobtrusive. Nearby, under the storm of wings, a man is standing, his back to me, profoundly rooted, silent by a stone marker. We both wear coats as black as the feathers of the birds. Above us, they arrive: alighting and arising, some perching on branches, others in perpetual motion and outcry.
