Tag: story

Re: Tale

A tale can be like a story, but perhaps it will contain deeper sentiment, as in the great work of Charles Dickins, A Tale of Two Cities. A tale can be as old as time or it can be something you tattle. In the spectrum of fiction, a tale can sit safely beside a yarn, which is something a sailor may spin about an adventure at sea. Fable, legend, and myth will also be found on this imaginary language spectral line.

The telling of a tale requires picturesque language allowing us to suspend any disbelief we may have with the narrator. Unlike non-fiction stories that must rely on facts to communicate an account, fans of tales want to be convinced that what happened, actually could have happened. This manufacturing, to me, is not lying but colouring by using what we know with what-might-be. I like revisiting the Sarah Conner story in the Terminator film series. She’s like a princess, but a princess with purpose: a tale of, and for, future times.

I loved reading fairy tales to my kids as I once loved being read Grimm-like fables when I was a child. Cinderella popped into my head recently as an example of the possibility of time travel. It was a Back to the Future mind spin where I rationalized the need for the glass slipper lady to return home by the time the clock struck twelve. H.G. Wells’s classic futuristic novel Time Machine is an early attempt to suggest that travelling through time could be achieved, with the appropriate clockwork technology. I wondered if perhaps Cinderella was a time warp artist, riding in that magical pumpkin-ish looking coach. Her only fault might have been she didn’t coordinate the return-time better with her fairy godmother/timekeeper.

In my version of Cinderella, she discovers a way to end her despair entirely by leaving her old world behind. I picture my Cinderella being trapped in long days at Walmart, greeting others who have interesting lives, while she is mired in the drudgery of retail. As I see it, time travel only gets messy when we actually come in contact with our own lineage. Maybe you could come and go through the ages as long as we kept it out of the path of your own timeline. For example you could see the court of Cleopatra but not visit your grannie when she was three. Perhaps my Cinderella wouldn’t lose a shoe but a watch, and this is why she forgot the time paradox: you can’t be in two places at once. Marty McFly discovered that timing was everything or else the future would not exist as only he alone could tell it.

Dreaming, like what I’ve been writing here, is tale-telling. There must never be punishment for it, unless it’s intended to deceive or hurt another. We can believe in old-wive’s tales to the point where their value continues to inspire new discoveries in STEM research. The truth must always remain the goal, but I see no harm in embellishing the facts, for story’s sake.

Re: Relationship

My bride and I have great conversations. This truth was key to our relationship from the get-go. Over the years we have developed a nice back and forth rhythm that rarely sees turbulence. Sometimes though, one of us may take exception to the words of the other. It’s hard to backtrack and trace where the intellectual response changed to an emotional one. The trigger is usually released when one of us feels threatened.

We watched an intriguing movie called Companion. It’s advertised as a scary film but the story has deeper elements about the way in which folks view relationships. Key to the film’s plot is that the lead character is a robot (this is clear in the trailer so I’m not giving anything away). I found it fascinating how the film slowly revealed what the characters needed from each other. We find that all the lead boyfriend wants is sex (even though he’s shy to admit that fact to his friends). He doesn’t like the term ‘fuck-bot’ but that is really as far as the relationship with Iris (his rental robot) goes. He wants to use her to attain his goals. This one-way relationship is more common than we wish.

Which got me thinking about how we can have a bond with things; humans, ideas, other species, and almost anything. I can have a fondness for a coffee mug. I may cherish a memory or a comfy sweater. Some people are fine with their prime relationship being with a pet. I’m growing to love Time itself. Once when I was sitting by an ocean shoreline I thought everything about that moment was relatable. The people passing by, the birds in the air, the sound of the ocean swells connected to my heartbeat and breathing. It felt like I was part of the mysterious continuum. I didn’t want the relationship I was having with this singular moment to stop. Likewise, while reading a book, I can feel this dialogue between me and the author is as strong as if we were sharing a coffee together, at the same bistro table, on a beautiful day. I’ll finish the book not wanting to say goodbye. That’s a temporal relationship!

Comics make jokes about over-age children staying in their parents’ basement unable to face the ‘real world’ due to having formed limiting, constricting attachments to their video games. Back in my day my stamp collections sometimes kept me from exploring the wider population of folks who were different than me. In maturity, I believe finding a mutual connection is the most exhilarating thing one can experience. Paramount to the experience is a sense that you are giving as much as you are getting. That balance is tricky, sticky, messy, and confusing. When it comes to humans being together in the present, their separate pasts must be welcomed guests. A shared, interesting story of what happened, might infect or enhance the stories we’ll tell at some point in our future.

That’s where conversation creates a comfortable feedback loop. It’s better when things stay curious rather than turning chaotic.

Re: Book

Publishing is going through massive change. Books, magazines and newspapers used to be the norm since Johannes Gutenberg invented the press machine. In my lifetime there has been a decline in print sources delivering news and information. Text and picture can arrive by digital means but for most people my age that mode of delivery comes up short. Words on paper (I miss handwritten letters delivered by postal carriers) have a tactile benefit that cannot be understated. Words are meant to make us feel.

The old Hawaii Five-O television series had an oft quoted catchy line, “Book ‘em Danno” when referring to crooks being arrested. Books on the other hand must never be judged harshly, by their cover or otherwise. My special mom, who can’t even see the covers of her audio books, would agree. She reports that a good book is like comfort food. Her CD player is provided by CNIB (bless them) and when her discs arrive in the mail box she exclaims with delight. It’s a treat to see her smile when she is immersed in her world of words. She shows similar interest when my wife reads to her from my published work on this site.

I’m in the process of gathering columns I once wrote for a daily newspaper into a book. It’s a self publishing effort and I don’t intend to make any money from it. I had made photocopies of the individual columns which I kept in a three ring binder. First the pages had to be recopied and the data stored on a digital file. Then I had to bring it to experts to have it paginated. I next had to book an appointment at my local printing house. Other writers can relate to a similar process as everyone has a story to tell it seems. Every person is literally a walking book. Those who write are usually ravenous readers. I am unreservedly pro books, never want them to be banned, never want them to be burned (ironically the books in the story Fahrenheit 451 ARE burned). Both banning and burning still occur around the world which to me is a shocking example of misdirected anger.

If those who love food are ‘Foodies’, then I guess you could call fans of reading, ‘Bookies’. Too bad that label is attached to shady old-school gambling agents of the underworld sort. As an aside, I wish all gambling ‘pushers’ were arrested and booked for damage to society, but that’s for another blog page. In other WordPress postings, I’ve written about my love of libraries where words and other forms of artistic expression and information can be shared. I love the continuing impression that a source of books is central to any healthy community.

When I book my final passage to the great cosmic beyond, I’ll mix my life essence with countless others in the ether. I can imagine that blend of quantum particulate matter lodging in the head of some future writer who might wonder where that idea came from for another story.

Re: Anecdote

My dad was a great story teller. It took patience to listen to his picturesque anecdotes about his day at work, his thoughts on clover, his belief that we all mattered. He rarely repeated a story. Each new day brought new material for him to wonder over. Each tale was embellished beyond practicality. For my father, the act of storytelling was the most important thing. He once held my sister and me captive as he dramatized his amazement over the amount of condensation he had had to wipe from a bathroom window after he had taken a shower.

His presence in my life was undervalued when I was young. His legacy remains however, as I have recorded that joy of the awesomeness of life by journaling. I have kept anecdotal thoughts on the events of my life in diaries, on note pads, in newspaper columns and internet blogs. I’m not alone, nor unique really, since anecdotes are the history of humankind.

Society can dismiss information that comes from others as not being accurate or not science based. Yet we do love to gossip. Often evidence in a trial is invalidated if it is anecdotal but get a large enough group to say they believe in something then fiction becomes truth. Old wives have been shamed for hundreds of years just because their tales were considered suspiciously held. Stories that are passed down from one generation to another may lack documentation but that doesn’t necessarily make them untrue. An oral history can indeed be worthy of note.

Indigenous peoples of the world have taught us colonizers that stories from our elders can be genuine. We can trust what our mom or dad or grandparents tell us. Take the recent discovery of the two ships from the Franklin expedition in 1813 as an example of the value of anecdotal evidence. Searches using various scientific methods were conducted on many occasions but it wasn’t until oral heritage descriptions from Inuit stories were analyzed that the search narrowed to the location of discovery. Now the area is a Parks Canada Historic sight.

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks

Speaking or writing anecdotally is sort of an analogue version of history. We may not need to gather around the tribal campfire anymore but family gatherings always enable experiences to be shared in an informal way. At the family level or nationally this is heritage talk. Inevitably there are paper trails to be followed when one is researching antiquity. There are legal documents, court reports, death notices, registries of births. The pages will sit in some file, or listed in a computer data base, maybe even laminated and framed for posterity.  My eldest son is a historian. He does painstaking research through various archival sources but the final product he creates reads like one of my dad’s stories.

Tales of where we have come from or who we were can act as a guide for us to discover our own lost wrecks.

Re: Story

I’m thrilled that my three grandchildren are being read stories to. I have yet to have that task assigned to me, what with COVID19 keeping my little ones from scrambling up on Grandpa’s lap. For now I have enjoyed the sight of them tumbling for access beside their parents while we long distance chat though the magic of the internet. The young ones’ smiles and squeaks of glee fill my ears and heart as cardboard pages are turned beyond the screen that separates us.

My father, who loved to create his own stories, once had to work night shift when my younger sister was in her prime bedtime story time. Unable to share tales with her to settle her to sleep, he crafted yarns on a reel to reel tape recorder. He left the cumbersome machine on a stool by her bed, asking me to press the start button. His voice would quickly work its magic spell on her anxious soul. Once down, she was a deep sleeper. I sometimes surrendered to sleep, as I sat on my bed nearby, only to be jolted awake by the flap, flap, flap of the tape’s end. 

Stories have always bound us together. Ancient ancestors recited tales around the campfire. Today we create blogs. When we travel and meet others we might share a meal together and ask, “So, what’s your story?” Our stories are our lives: Interpreted so that we may understand ourselves. Told, so that others may know us. The character Tyrion Lannister in this scene from The Game of Thrones speaks well of the power of stories. 

History is really a series of stories, retold, written down, debated and repeated. Unfortunately, men have generally been the arbiters of HIStory, with women’s roles often being left as footnotes. Societies are slowly coming to realize that the truths of our lives have only been half told and that HERStories cannot be left unrecorded. A woman is not the ‘better half’ of a partnership story anymore than her past can be lewdly considered ‘storied’ as in pulp fiction novels. All human beings contribute to the narrative that is OURStory.

When I witness a large crowd of people I’m overwhelmed by the thought of all those stories: Globally almost 8 billion! The story of one can seem as simple as choosing yes or no. Now I add an extra to my circle. Then I add those who are close to me, then those who I work with and others I’m only vaguely familiar with. Like rain drops on a quiet pond, I picture a vast collection of Venn diagrams; spaces where stories overlap, large arcs where stories are still unfolding, and along the edges there are stories I can only imagine. My story is only complete when it’s placed within the context of this vast community.

I don’t know how to comprehend the many stories of humanity but sometimes I have a Eureka moment when I experience poetry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws5klxbI87I