Years ago my friend Suzanne read the following quote aloud, and it set up shop in me:
“A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.” (Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller)
Here in Berlin, I’ve been working with kids on their literacy skills.
Every one of these children has been displaced. They don’t necessarily use that word. “Displaced.” It’s a strange word. It’s too close to “misplaced.” As though humans were like any other object. When a child looks you in the eyes and says “tell us a story,” you know this is no mere object. This is another soul asking for contact with yours. And it’s entirely up to you, whether or not you offer your soul. (That’s called free will.) I humbly submit that it might be one of the only ways to feel alive right now.
I’ve started writing this post a couple times over the past few months. Each time, I’ve deleted it and gone back to writing my books. I think about how cruel this moment can be, how many good faith attempts at compassionate honesty are instantly twisted into something else. I think about the threats, the dreams of violence people have sent me. I think about the other things that have offered me the chance to let fear take hold and blossom. But the truth is those are the wrong things to think about. Those are all among the most boring, normal, predictable things humans do to each other, and the entire planet. I digest them like everything else, and they don’t really transform me. I transform them. It’s time to focus the overwhelming majority of my energy on what is lasting and real—and what makes thriving and flourishing possible. And that’s love. Only love. The kind of love that makes a child look into a stranger’s eyes and say “tell me.” It’s not an easy kind of love. It’s miles and miles away from the kind of love we see in most stories.
My time with the kids has made me realize that I am a storyteller first and foremost. In part, this is because they are storytellers par excellence, as every child is, and the value of a story is plainly obvious to them. I mean two things here: that stories have value is plainly obvious to them, as is the fact that not all stories are created equal. If you were to tell them, as adults like to tell each other, that stories in general and books in particular are boring or useless or pointless, you would see pain in their eyes, and then distrust. Because they know.
Every other employment-related incarnation of mine—teacher, student, maid, lifeguard, fast-food employee, lecturer, translator, even philosopher—has, in some way or another, been a means to an end: contact with stories. I used to be embarrassed about it. I guess I hid it for about 30 years. But I am well past the need to hide it now. Especially because I no longer doubt the necessity of the storyteller. Some storytellers have it easier than others, but not a single one of us who does it day in and day out could say we have an easy task. Now that I no longer want or need to hide it, the only question is what to do about it.
I am still the child who needs to be told stories, who needs to tell stories of my own—as I believe we all are. But I am also the adult who must be highly attuned to the difference between fact and fiction, because it is abundantly clear that something happened in our rush to eliminate our belief in the necessity of story. It went underground. It went to the underworld. It lifted weights and started taking steroids. It picked up a few well-worn tactics. It emerged in dark, violent figures promising simple solutions to complicated problems. And now we have to deal with it.
“[T]he tiny, fragile human body.” That one little clause destroys me. It’s a truth so pure it hurts to look at. Reaching that level of truth through story—paradoxical though it may be—is the only task I can give myself. I say this to reach my friends and loved ones, and also to reach the kind, curious strangers who are listening and watching: I hope with all my heart that you are also giving yourself the gift of finding the sacred task. I’m not sure I like being this direct and “open.” I’m not really sure it’s my style. But the situation is dire. Everything is changing. Even the clouds. We can no longer say they remain unchanged.
To bring it full circle, it’s not a coincidence that some of the most precious and beautiful memories I have of my Great Aunt Beverly involve sitting on her balcony and listening to her impromptu stories about the things she could see in the clouds. Dragons, ships, old men, trees. It was a game she encouraged all of us to play. “What do you see in the clouds? Now make up a story about it.” It’s also not a coincidence that I learned to play this game with her during my first few years of full-time work as a teacher, with very little money and 50+ hours of work per week. I didn’t know if I could keep any of the magic in me alive. I had little certainty that I would ever find my way to telling stories more directly. In her own way, she showed me that it’s possible. She kept something alive in me.
As usual, this is just a love letter with a bit of a frame around it. Hi, everyone out there. Thanks to those of you who keep signing up for this thing. Stories forthcoming! :)
If you’d like to directly support my ability to write (other than buying books, of course), here’s a link to my venmo.
<3, LL