Lessons For Life and Storytelling

Stories don't have to be exotic to speak to your heart, and sometimes finding the familiar in the exotic actually creates more of an impression than do the images of figs, dates, silks, and lapis lazuli. I mentioned that writing knows what it needs more than the writer, that writing can know what the author needs-- stories are the same. Everyone takes from stories what they need, and sometimes the things we take connect us in ways we could not have thought to connect. Globalization is not as new a phenomenon as we might like to believe; stories have always traveled the trade routes. Folklore and fairy tales have always been re-embroidered to fit new contexts, whether in ancient Baghdad, medieval Germany, colonial Mexico, or a Walt Disney animated film of the twentieth century. From American Indian stories of Coyote the trickster, to West African stories of Anansi, or Aesop's fables, our stories have always given us common ground.

I walked outside today in sandals and a dress, my feet looking little and graceful, my hair swaying with every step, and felt like Dunyazad, a character in Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher, one of my favorite books. The book focuses on a girl named Marjan, and how she helps Shahrazad collect stories to tell the Sultan for 1,001 Nights. Each chapter begins with a brief section called Lessons for Life and Storytelling, each of which relate to the content of the book, but which also really do give wonderful advice. I was re-reading a few today, and realized the extent to which I remembered these pieces of wisdom from when I first read the book when I was twelve, and the extent to which they have actually influenced the way I think about life and storytelling. One of my favorites is this:

When you're telling a story, you can suggest things that would get you in trouble if you were just stating your own opinion. And you can suggest even more if you wrap one tale inside another. So if you're telling a tale about a merchant, and the merchant tells a tale about a barber, and the barber tells a tale about a fisherman... Well, inside the fisherman's tale you can put the most provoking and mutinous truths. Because the tale is so far removed from you.

Another that made a deep impression is this:
There's more than one way to be crippled. I don't mean that you can have a crippled foot or a crippled knee or a crippled hand. I mean you can be crippled in your heart. You can store up all your rage at someone, which can weigh down on your heart and twist it into a weird shape until you're always aching underneath. After awhile, you get used to the ache. You forget what it's like not to ache. You forget that you're aching at all.

Reading this the first time, I had a little petty 'hatred' of a girl in middle school, like everyone does, I'm sure, and I recognized that such a feeling would only poison me. This passage became even more important as I got older, as worse things happened, as people hurt me in ways I hadn't known it was possible to hurt. I realized that I couldn't hold onto negative feelings, that letting another person's actions eat away at me so much only made me constantly ache. Becoming stuck in a moment, recalling days of beauty now mixed with incredible and incredulous grief, only made me bitter. I never want emotional pain to define me, or to be so entrenched in me that I forget how much I hurt. Knowing this has allowed me to let go of things, even things that are hard to let go of. I think at times remembering this passage has helped me to put away the past, or at least to take the sting out of it, to quit yelling at God for making me hurt so much. We must realize that it is within our own power to heal.

Finally, this one:
There are many different worlds inside a city. The world of the rich and the world of the beggars. The world of men and the world behind the veil. The worlds of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews. All the worlds touch at the bazaar. And the other place where they touch is in stories. Shahrazad crossed borders all the time, telling tales of country women and Bedouin sheikhs, of Jewish doctors and Christian brokers, of India and China, and the lands of the jinn. If we don't share our stories-- trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk-- we will all be strangers forever.

Never keep your stories to yourself. Remember, with our thoughts we make the world.

(photo by Peonies and Polaroids)