Hope's Blog
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
This morning I got up at the crack of a dark, rainy dawn to take my new Saturn in for its first service visit. While I was there, I signed up to have my tires filled with nitrogen instead of air. The benefits, according to the person at the Saturn place, include: I will burn less gas and therefore get better gas mileage and have less impact on the environment.
I feel good about this decision, but I am laughing at myself now: THIS, of all topics, is what compelled me to start blogging again?
Yup.Labels: Nitrogen in my tires.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
I had not logged in for so long that Blogger had changed and I had to sign up again! My "new version" says I last published in December of 2006, but as far as I know, I have not posted anything since July of 2006. Hmm.
I am going to write about death again. Just so you know.
My cat, Emily, died at home last month. She had been getting weaker and weaker, but I don't think she felt any pain at the end. I hope not, anyway. I had been present at the moment of her birth, almost 19 years ago, and I was present at the moment of her death. I can not say that about anyone else. As my godmother says, it is a holy privilege.
I don't miss having a cat, necessarily, but I really miss Emily. We were used to each other.
My family and friends have been a huge comfort.
Last weekend I went to one of my local Humane Society places. I suspected that I was doing something a little unethical, but I was drawn there anyway. I knew I was not going to get a new cat. I just wanted to pat one, maybe snuggle one in my lap. It would not be fair for me to raise false hopes, but I really needed some domestic animal contact.
The place was a lot busier than I had imagined. The good news is that there were tons of people milling around, looking for pets, and three cats were boxed up to go home just while I was there.
The bad news was that it was not a "snuggle up and help Hope grieve" kind of atmosphere at all. There were small children running around, and lots of barking and other noise, and strong, strong smells. But I am still glad I went. It seemed like a well-run place, even with all the stress factors. I brought them some garbage bags from their online "wish list" and plan to make a monetary donation as well.
There was one cat who was middle-aged, very fat, grey-haired, ...and very beautiful. Affectionate but not super needy or aggressive.
Aagghh! I am not ready to get another cat! I want to replace my carpet, for one thing, so that my new cat doesn't smell where Emily couldn't help peeing at the end and think that she should pee there, too, in sympathy.
But I may need to go back to the Humane Society this weekend and see if that one cat is still there, and if she is as beautiful and likable as I remember her.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Some YA librarians were talking recently about bibliotherapy. Here is my current take on it:
I do believe in the healing power of stories, both told/heard and written/read.
I also believe that not only can stories be healing in and of themselves, they can also jump-start healing that happens through reflection and/or discussion and/or other artistic expression.
I also believe in the importance of readers' advisory training and experience.
I also believe that as a librarian (and as a storyteller, for that matter) I have a responsibility to offer both "mirror" stories and "window" stories to my community.
However, I do not think that anyone should be diagnosing other people's problems off the street and prescribing stories as if they were pills.
Even self-medicating is tricky.
My mother died on May 11. When I came home from her funeral in Florida, I looked at the stack of "get ready for trouble" YA novels that I had piled up at one end of the sofa before I left, and I felt like throwing up. On top of the pile was Jailbait, by Leslea Newman.
I put a pillowcase over that stack of books and thought, "Wow. If there was ever a time in my life that I felt weak and vulnerable and in need of some bibliotherapy, it is now. C'mon, Hope. You're a librarian. What do you think? Will any random grief novel help me to cope, or should I be looking for a novel in which the main character is a single, white, middle-aged, female librarian whose mother died much earlier than expected?
"Yes!" I thought. "That's what I want to read. Exactly that. Is there such a thing? I hope so. Because if I can find a story exactly like mine, I can read along with the main character to find out if she ever gets on with her life, and if so, how."
But as soon as I finished that thought, I realized that I didn't really want to read any curative fiction at all. An exact match to my own story as I was living it would be impossible to find. Anything less would just be irritating right then.
Nor was I ready to read any nonfiction about the meaning of death, or how to grieve, or any of that. I just wanted to read something nurturing.
To my surprise, this turned out to be a book from my "just for fun" YA stack at the other end of the sofa, a book that someone had picked out during our last Teen Library Council book buying trip: Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with His Son, by Peter Carey. I had lived for five years in Japan, so reading Carey's account of his trip to Tokyo with his anime-fan son brought back positive memories for me. It also reminded me, gently, that it was my mother who had first piqued my interest in Japan.
A few days later, still trying to get grounded, I went to Borders to browse the rubber stamping magazines. I thought it would be a good idea for me to stay out of the pyschology/self-help aisle, but a front-of-store display of a new adult graphic novel, Mom's Cancer, by Brian Fies, blindsided me. I picked it up even though I wasn't sure about reading it, but once I got into it, I read the whole thing, crying quietly in the bookstore coffee shop. It wasn't exactly my family's story, but it was very insightful, even funny in some parts, and therefore comforting.
Now it is almost two months after my mother's death. Last weekend I finally got around to reading Jailbait. I still have a job to do, after all. Evaluating books is part of my job.
My decision to put Jailbait in my library's YA collection will be controversial, yes, because the book is about a lonely 16-year-old girl from a "safe suburb" who gets involved with an abusive older man and calls it love, but I am now ready to defend the book, cover and all. Perhaps it will help some other girl hold out for the real thing.
By the way, reading it was also very therapeutic. I cried and cried for the virtually motherless girl in that story.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
My mother died on May 11, less than a month ago.
45 years ago today she gave birth to me.
It is so, so weird not to be able to give her a call any more.
Monday, March 27, 2006
You can listen to an interview of two of the tellers involved with the Going Deep: Long Traditional Stories Festival at Sean Buvala's Storyteller.net ampitheater.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
ONE (of 10 parts, continued below) - Background
I have received several invitations to write about my experience of the "Going Deep: Long Traditional Stories Festival," held March 16-19, 2006 in Bethlehem, Indiana, headquartered at the Storyteller's Riverhouse.
And not just me. The tellers (Liz Warren, Olga Loya, Priscilla Howe) and the hosts (Cynthia Changeris and Mary Hamilton, also known collectively as "Scheherezade's Legacy") invited all of the participants to write responses to five evaluation questions, which they offered to type up and share with everyone later. Another of the participants, Jackie Ransom, invited all of the participants to share thoughts online via a Yahoo group. Priscilla invited comments via the Storytell list and via her blog.
I invited myself, too. I agree with writing instructor Donald Murray, whose books I love, and who said, "Writing is a way of making meaning." In other words, writing is not just for recording meaning, or for sharing it. The act of writing about something deepens one's understanding of it.
I have this very, very low-key blog of my own, which my brother, Ned, set up for me. Normally I prefer to keep this place under the radar - never using my last name, never naming my library or my university or my neighborhood - not because I have any secrets here or because I imagine that I can stay invisible to anyone who really wants to find me, but because more exposure and more hits would mean more pressure to say something interesting on a regular basis, and I already have enough pressure in my life!
But someone during the festival quoted something from Elaine H. Pagel's book, The Gnostic Gospels: "If you bring forth what is in you, it will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, it will destroy you."
So I like the idea of posting my Bethlehem thoughts here, as just one take on what was a rich and multi-faceted experience for many people. I am posting things here that I want to remember and go even deeper with in the days and weeks and months to come.
However, if you are quoted and/or named here and would rather not be, if I have shared something of yours that you would rather not have out here on the Internet, please let me know and I will edit this accordingly. You can reach me via this email address: bryteller at yahoo dot com.
The story of how the "Going Deep" festival came to be varies slightly depending on who you talk to, but basically there were three tellers who were each working on long (longer than an hour each) stories in various parts of the United States. The three long-tellers knew about each other and liked each other's work. They thought how wonderful it would be to meet somewhere and offer their long stories in their entireties.
Meanwhile, at a bend in the Ohio River, near Louisville, Kentucky, but on the Indiana side, a Time Goddess and a Healing Angel were raising a business or two together. They were storytellers themselves, but they were also shamans of a sort. They would never call themselves shamans, but they were very good at creating and holding space in which people could gather and journey inward and outward - space that allowed Mystery to happen - and that is what shamans do. Someone mentioned the two shaman-tellers' services to the three long-tellers, and "Going Deep" was born.
Bethlehem is a good place for giving birth. I'll tell more about the baby festival in a moment, but first I want to tell how I came to be present at it.
I think Priscilla Howe and I have been friends in past lives as well as in this one. We have spent very little face-to-face time together, and only infrequently emailed each other, but when we do get together in person, it's as if our souls have been talking to each other all along, and we just now happen to be tuning in to their frequency in order to hear the conversation. It is rather odd, when I stop to think about it. In some ways, it is as if we had shared a womb or something a long time ago. It is a strange and good feeling.
Priscilla came here to Indianapolis a few months ago to give a demonstration of her work in an entertainers' showcase. I do not do any hiring of entertainers, myself, but I went to the showcase because I had enjoyed hearing Priscilla tell her signature story, "The Ghost with the One Black Eye," in English and Turkish, I think it was, during the regional concert at the big festival in Jonesborough a few years ago. I was looking forward to hearing her "sampler" in Indianapolis.
The sampler included a snippet from a much longer work, "The Romance of Tristan and Iseult." After hearing the snippet, I very badly wanted to hear the whole, hour-plus story! When Priscilla told me about the long stories festival that she and Liz and Olga were planning for this spring, I really, really wanted to go.
But I am a new home owner, and my car is on its last legs, and my mother is sick in Florida, and I have more library and storytelling work around here than I can handle, so there are just many, many other things right now that I need to budget time and money for. I had no business signing up to go to a storytelling festival, even at the bargain price of $375 for everything. Nope, nope, nope.
Thank God, thank God, I ignored my better judgment!
In fact, I not only signed up for "Going Deep," I booked a flight to Florida beforehand so that I could spend a few days with my parents. My brother and sister made arrangements to get down there, too. My sister and I decided to bring craft materials with the theme of "Earth, Air, Fire, and Water" to play with while we visited. I also made an appointment to take my ancient Buick in to be worked on in the nano-second between the two trips. I needed to be able to drive down to Bethlehem from Indy after flying back from Florida.
I mean, if you're going to take time off, take time off, right? If you're going to spend money, spend it! Spend it on what really matters.
'Back to the festival...
The plan was to hear one long story on each of three evenings:
Thursday night - Liz Warren telling "The Story of the Grail"
Friday night - Olga Loya telling "The Aztec Creation Story"
Saturday night - Priscilla Howe telling "Tristan and Iseult"
After each telling, we would let the images from the stories sink in and inform our dreams at night, and we would explore the stories intensively together as a group in a workshop the next morning. The afternoons would be free.
I think that most people arrived in the tiny town of Bethlehem on Thursday afternoon, March 16. Some people, myself included, arrived in Bethlehem after dinner Thursday night and went directly to the Schoolhouse. I was tired from plane travel and foot travel and car travel, but I was also delighted to be just in time to get a hug from Priscilla before hearing Cynthia give the official welcome.
Then Liz told her long "Story of the Grail." It was so clear and rich and beautiful.
I don't know Liz very well at all, and I don't think I had even heard her tell before, but at a National Storytelling Network conference several years ago I had a bad reaction to one of the sessions, and Liz' brief comments to me in the hallway afterwards helped calm me down, helped get me grounded in myself again. Ever since then, I have thought of her with gratitude as a Rock Woman.
In everyday life, Liz teaches storytelling at the South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. She is one of the founding members of the Storytelling Institute there. She has also given workshops in tandem with Jim May, a wonderful storyteller from Illinois, on "Healing the Wounded Storyteller."
Of the three tellers featured in the "Going Deep" festival, I think Liz had logged the most flight time with her story. You can buy her recording of "The Story of the Grail" on CD, too.
I had learned a much-diluted snippet of the grail story several years ago when I was a children's librarian and my library's summer reading theme was based on Star Wars. I trimmed down a version of Percival's story that I had read in a collection called Once Upon a Galaxy, by Josepha Sherman. I told it to elementary school children during my outreach visits. Even drastically pared down, it was a powerful story, so I expected to be blown away by a full-length version.
Liz's carefully-crafted version was both familiar and yet so much more complete. I just drank in the richness of it.
Afterwards, Cynthia invited everyone back to her Storyteller's Riverhouse for cake and conversation. Mary Hamilton offered to help the latecomers find their beds and get settled.
While I was waiting for Mary, I met two other people who were waiting, too. It was dark out, as in "there's a light on in the Schoolhouse, but out here in the parking lot you can see Orion and the Big Dipper and the Seven Sisters!" When I introduced myself and asked for names I heard "Marissa" and "Cori" but I honestly could not tell if Cori was male or female. Her voice was deep enough that she could have been either one, and she was very tall, like a basketball player, bundled up a bit against the cold. She wore a baseball cap that covered her short hair. I don't remember if I could see her eyebrow piercings that first night, but I was immediately attracted to her.
The three of us chatted a bit about where we were from, how long the drive had been, and so on, until Mary Hamilton came out and got in my car so that Marissa and Cori and some other people could follow us to the house where we all would be sleeping.
After I stashed my stuff, I went over to the main house.
The Storyteller's Riverhouse is the bed-and-breakfast where Cynthia Changeris and Mary Hamilton hold their WOW weekends. WOW stands for Working on Our Work. Storytellers come for the weekend from all over the country and take turns giving each other their undivided attention for whatever story or other project the teller wants help with. Sitting in Cynthia's cozy, book-filled dining room, I remembered that I had been a participant at the first WOW weekend, too, a few years ago. It felt really good to be back in Cynthia's house.
Mary Hamilton (now acting as Cook's Assistant) and Eugene Ward (Chief Cook) heated for me some delicious stew that was left over from dinner, and fixed me an elegant mixed-greens salad with orange pieces and sliced grapes. Then there were FOUR kinds of gourmet cake that someone in Bethlehem had made and brought over.
I sat eating and talking with Priscilla and with Rebecca Henderson, who is also known as "The Bluegrass Gypsy." She is a storyteller - I think she said she knew Cynthia and Mary via the Kentucky Storytellers' Guild or something like that - but her main gig is reading palms, which is, after all, just another kind of storytelling. Rebecca would be available during the afternoon breaks to tell the stories that people were carrying in their hands. ($25 for 20 minutes.) But that first night we were just chatting. Rebecca made references to a wide variety of literature and to Kentucky history. I really enjoyed talking with her.
We were surrounded by other storytellers as we chatted, and not just storytellers, but tellers who had recently been drenched with pure and powerful images of King Arthur and Perceval and the Fisher King. The energy was eager and tentative, both.
Rebecca turned to me at one point, closed her eyes, and said, "Do you hear that? Often when I listen to the sounds of a large group of people, it sounds like fire crackling. But this crowd sounds like water bubbling."
And it did, but by then I was almost too exhausted to register it. I said good night and went over to the house that I had been assigned to for sleeping.
Where I stayed clenched awake the whole night.
I was too dazed to say, "Please stop!" to the people who were yammering and flipping lights on and off and on again, and talking some more, and talking some more, and some more, and some more. Every time the house would get quiet, it seemed, someone would start talking again. Talking loudly like a storyteller in front of an audience.
When everyone finally did go to sleep, they snored.
The following night, along with the loud yammering and the lights, someone decided it was time to change the battery in the house's smoke alarm, which of course set it off.
When everyone finally settled down from that, someone else opened a window and asked, "Hope? Do you mind this window being open? Hope? Do you mind this window being open?" until I came out from under the covers and shouted, "I'm fine! Will you please let me sleep?!"
Now those of you who know me well will be quick to say, "But Hope! Did you say anything when people were talking loudly and flipping the lights, or did you just stew silently? Did you just expect people to know what you needed because you had the covers pulled over your head? Those tellers were as high on the stories as you were. They were just processing it differently. They were clueless, but they weren't being mean."
Okay, you're right. I could have done more to Make My Needs Known. Fair enough.
I would not be saying anything now, either, except that it is funny, now, and ultimately everything worked out for the best. I now know that sleep deprivation can be a gift, breaking down my defenses, cracking me open in ways that are useful. It is hell going through it, but it is nothing to be afraid of.
In other words, sleep deprivation can enhance an adventure.
TWO - The Participants
But I didn't know yet that sleep deprivation would help me "go deeper." By the time alarm clocks started ringing Friday morning, I only felt resentment. I didn't bother trying to capture any story-related dreams in my journal because a) I hadn't even slept, and b) people were already starting to yammer distractingly.
I grabbed my clothes and headed for the main house. Just the few minutes of walking in silence across the lane, hearing the birds calling, seeing the river flowing by, brought me peace, and by the time I went into the dining room, I felt myself again, ready to exchange quiet "good mornings" with the others that were already there.
Breakfast was yummy scrambled eggs, fresh orange juice, good coffee from a big antique urn that a neighbor had brought over, and choice of several kinds of toast.
After breakfast we gathered in the front room of Cynthia's b&b. Before starting Liz' workshop, we went around the room and introduced ourselves. I don't remember what everyone said, but I'll take this opportunity to say a little something that I remember about each person as I go down the list of names that I jotted down.
David Novak - He said that as soon as he saw the advertisement, he sent his money in. "Going Deep" was exactly what he had been looking to do. Later in the weekend, Cynthia mentioned that she had been worried that not enough people would sign up, so when she got David's check, she was so relieved. "At least one person is coming!"
And not just any one person. As Margaret Meyers said later in the weekend, "David you make me think SO HARD!"
I love that about him, too. I imagine that any gathering is richer because of his thought-provoking yet good-humored questions, questions that elicit gifts so gently and brilliantly.
I am planning to use David's "Storyteller's Compass" material with my own library school storytelling students this semester, and possibly some other groups. David gave me permission, plus gave me quite a bit of his break time during the festival to refresh my memory of how the "Compass" works. I suspect that nothing will be as good as having David there to lead the work himself, but I also know from past experience as a participant that the "Compass" structure is inherently good and adaptable. I'm really looking forward to working with David's ideas and activities. I will share my write-up of my experiences with him as a way of saying "thank you!" Maybe that will encourage him to develop the "Compass" into a kit that others can use, too. It's wonderful stuff.
Marilyn Kinsella - I knew Marilyn from Storytell, and from being together at the Northlands Storytelling Network conference a few years ago. She is based in St. Louis. We hadn't seen each other in person in a while, and since I have not been able to participate in Storytell, I hadn't "seen" her online, either. She told me that she made the leap to fulltime telling in 2002, I think it was, after retiring from librarianship. Since then she has been hired to do a lot of things, even pig calling! It sounded to me as if overall she is doing quite well.
She shared what it was like to hear Jackie Torrence tell for the last time, and I felt as if I had been privileged enough to be there, too, in the presence of the master of fulgent pauses.
Marilyn also said she had recently become a grandmother!
Dennis Rader - I hadn't met Dennis before, or if I had, it had only been in passing at a conference. He hails from Bailey Switch, Kentucky. Bailey Switch is the name of the train station there.
At breakfast that first morning he mentioned that he is a fulltime writer now, pulling back from teaching and telling for a while. He has an article coming out in a compilation of articles published by Emergence magazine. I was fascinated by his comments on chaos theory and how it might relate to storytelling. I was intrigued by the idea of historians writing "The History of What If?" Dennis told us about a servant that had saved Alexander the Great when he was only 22 (before he became so great) - and asked us to imagine what the world would be like if the servant hadn't been able to kill the soldier who was trying to kill Alexander.
I think that Dennis and Mary Kane came to the festival together: he was very kind and attentive to her, made a point of always sitting next to her. But he was kind and attentive to me, too, when our paths crossed, which was lovely! Dennis personified for me The Real Kentucky Gentleman.
Mary Kane - Mary Kane is now based in Kentucky, I think, but she is originally from Los Angeles. She wears dramatically beautiful clothes - I especially loved her red cowboy boots. She said, "People often say to me, 'You're not from around here, are you.'" But she invited laughter when she said it.
Mary asked if I knew Ellen Munds, director of Storytelling Arts of Indiana. I said of course! Ellen is the reason that storytelling is so rich and alive in Indiana! All of us who live and tell and listen in Indiana owe a lot to her.
Mary mentioned meeting Ellen at a storytelling festival producers' retreat held there at the Storyteller's Riverhouse a couple years ago, so she must be some sort of producer herself. She mentioned working with a children's hospital, too, which interested me because I have been doing some training of volunteer storytellers for a children's hospital near my home, through Ellen and Storytelling Arts. I wish I had made more time to talk to Mary about this, but I also know that there is never enough time to do everything, and that's just the way it is.
By the way, Mary Kane is a photographer, too.
I took to calling Mary Kane by both of her names, as Cynthia does, to distinguish her from Mary Hamilton.
Sara Trautner - I had never met Sara before this festival, and I still don't know much about her except that she is based in Minnesota. But I am so grateful to have met her because she prompted in me some useful realizations about visibility.
During Liz' workshop the discussion turned to the death of the red horse (the first horse that Perceval rides on his way to the castle of the Fisher King, aka the grail castle.) Liz said, "The red horse represents everything we loved about being young. We grieve when the red horse dies, but we know that Perceval has to move on to the black horse."
So yes, there is grieving when the red horse dies, but switching horses, switching to an older body, is not all bad. On the black horse you realize that you have many more choices now. You can make the choices yourself, use your own energy and wisdom, rather than just dropping the reins and being led. You know what to do more. Liz or somebody said, "I have resources now to take me where I wanted to go when I was 30 and couldn't get there. I can be myself more easily now that I have switched to the black horse."
Sara said that she envied Perceval's clear, abrupt transition. So many times it happens so gradually that you don't even realize you have switched horses until one day you drop something and it hurts to bend over and pick it up. Or someone calls you "ma'am." Or men no longer follow you with their eyes. Sara said, "You wonder when you became the invisible woman."
At first I thought, "But I love being the invisible woman now. I love not having to worry about men following me with their eyes. I'm proud to be called 'ma'am.' And since I don't remember a time that I ever felt comfortable in my body, I don't miss it. I love being invisible."
But then I thought, "Is that true? Do I really love being invisible?"
If I am honest, I have to say, "No."
I don't care about men following me with their eyes, and I don't care about being famous, but I don't want to be discounted, either. I still want to matter, to someone, even if it's only myself, and even if it's only on some tiny level.
Then I wondered how many "invisible" women (or men) I have overlooked in my daily life.
I looked more closely at Sara that first morning, and kept looking at her all weekend, seeing (and hearing!) new and interesting things each time I looked. She is a far cry from being invisible herself.
Susan Grizzell - Susan is a fulltime storyteller, but agreed to serve as a cook's assistant with Mary Hamilton during this festival. She has lived a lot of places, but comes originally from West Virginia, I think, and now is based here with me in Indianapolis. I realized this weekend that even though I have had the pleasure of hearing her tell a wide variety of pieces over the years - from "Pottle of Brains" at a Tellabration long ago, to stories of pioneer women based on historical documents, to dance-story collaborations from India, to stories told bilingually in English and American Sign Language, I hadn't heard her tell anything lately.
Thank goodness I stayed for lunch on Sunday! Lunch that final day, after a lot of people had left, offered the unexpected blessing of a spontaneous joke fest that had all of us around the dining table laughing deeply from our tummies. I loved hearing Sue tell about some of the things that her five-year-old daughter finds funny.
I want to see if Sue and I can get together in Indianapolis more outside of storytelling events.
Rebecca Henderson - I already told you that she is a palm reader. I also love the story of how she and her boyfriend, Jerry, met.
Jerry was able to come in to Bethlehem for Olga's telling Friday night. Everyone who met him, liked him, and the next morning, someone asked Rebecca how they had met.
She said, "Well, I had been married for a long time, and it had just ended. I was feeling fragile and not at all interested in getting involved with anyone else.
"One day I was thinking that I was in the mood for something sweet. Cake, maybe, or a piece of pie. I resolved to get that for myself soon.
"Not long after that I was at" (some gathering, whose name I didn't catch) "and this man asked me if he could take me out for a cup of coffee.
"I said, 'No, no..thank you, anyway' and walked away.
"He followed me and said, 'Could I take you out for a meal, then?'
"And I said, 'No, no, I don't think so.'
"Finally he stood in front of me, put his hands out to his sides and said, 'Is there anything I can take you out for?'
"Suddenly I remembered what I had been thinking about earlier. 'Dessert,' I told him. 'You may take me out for dessert.'
"And he did. And now I'm with a really nice guy."
I love this story!
Jackie Ransom - I had not met Jackie before this festival either. She drove over from Missouri, where she is a teacher and a storyteller and working on a graduate degree in counseling, I think. In other words, there is a LOT going on in her life right now. She told about how her sister had seen her lugging her suitcase down the stairs and said, "Sis, I am so proud of you for GOING." It sounded to me as if Jackie had been feeling as swamped and stuck as I had been feeling. I'm proud of both of us for getting ourselves where we needed to be.
Stephanie Rhein - I hadn't met Stephanie before, and I have to say that she is another person that I regret not getting to spend more time with during the festival, but I also believe that there are no accidents, and for whatever reason we were just not meant to spend a lot of time together this weekend. I am glad we had a chance to connect at least a little bit over knitting and coffee that first morning, talking with Priscilla, too, as we waited in the front room for the workshop to start.
Lucinda Flodin - I think Lucinda is one of the women who used to run the Wild Onion Storytelling Festival in Illinois, and who still helps with the Illinois Storytelling Festival. I had met her briefly at a Northlands Storytelling Network conference a few years ago, and was glad to get to know her a little better now. She is a good role model for me as someone who is sensitive and aware and engaged, but who doesn't let any of the "storytelling politics" get to her.
She mentioned the importance of seasoned storytellers being generous with beginning tellers. "So what if they imitate your style or someone else's? So what if they tell like Laura Simms for a while? Eventually they will realize it is not a good fit, and they will develop their own style, but it doesn't hurt anyone for them to imitate others for a while, while they are learning."
At one point during the weekend, a toilet backed up. I only heard about this later, about how Cori saved the day by running over to the main house to get a plunger, and came back and fixed the problem. Lucinda was full of praise for Cori, but added, "This is why I don't have indoor plumbing on my farm!" I was surprised by how much I had assumed about Lucinda, and how it was all blown away, or at least opened up, by that one sentence.
I reigned in my inquisitiveness when she mentioned "Dennis," but she did not make me feel badly at all for putting my foot in my mouth in the first place by not knowing who Dennis was, that Dennis had been her husband or that he had died. I'm not going to feel badly now, either, but now that I've done an Internet search and discovered that Lucinda and Dennis Frederick used to tell together as The Storyweavers, I wish I could have heard them tell together. I hope I get to hear her tell some day.
Nan Kammann remembers Dennis on the third page down in this Jay O'Callahan newsletter.
Back to the Going Deep festival...
The most powerful image or insight or whatever that I received from Lucinda was the idea of storyteller as midwife. Lucinda used to be an actual midwife.
She said, "You can't be self-indulgent. Meaning is the property of the listener. The midwife's job is to keep the baby from hitting the floor, and to put the baby on to the mother's breast. The storyteller's job is very similar."
Megan Wells - Megan is physically tiny, hugely talented, and normally very pretty, but this weekend one of her eyes was crumpled closed and leaking. So the first thing she said to the group was, "I have shingles in my eye, but it's not contagious." She offered herself with good humor and insight as a physical manifestation of Kundry, from the story of the grail, and the split being(s) in the Aztec creation story.
Maybe she resonated with the split-ness of Iseult the Fair and Iseult of the White Hands, too, I don't know. But in any case I appreciated that Megan reminded us many times of the importance of moving beyond singularity, through duality, into multiplicity. And of the importance of getting past naming and blaming. "Stop blaming the problems of our society on the abuse of women. It's not the abuse of women, it's the abuse of humanity. The imbalance of humanity."
She also said, "The primary use of the long story is as a curative for society. It helps us to see the blessings of the mistakes of fate, helps us to see that ultimately there is no victimhood, no shame."
Megan is a long-story teller, herself. She mentioned working on the story of Helen of Troy, among others, and the challenges that come from honoring what called you to a story in the first place while not forcing the story to match your own, personal story just because it resonated with you.
Dorothy Cleveland ("Dot") - For me, the most important thing that Dot brought to this festival was her elaboration on what Megan and others had said about the usefulness of long stories. Dot said, "I'm tired of cowboy stories that only tell about the gunfights. The cowboys never mature. I need to hear the whole stories. If you only tell the battles, you never get to see the cowboys grow up. In epic stories, you get to see the big picture, you get to see the blessings of the mistakes. You don't get stuck in the first half of the story."
Margaret Meyers - Margaret has, or is working on, a master's degree in storytelling from East Tennessee State University. She brought greetings to me from Dr. Millie Jackson, who had interviewed me by phone several weeks ago as part of some data collection that she was doing for a piece of research on storytelling. I was so glad to hear from Millie this way, because what I remember about our interview was how I just rambled and babbled on and on. It warmed my heart that Margaret said, "You're Hope? Millie Jackson told me to be sure and meet you."
Margaret was working on an academic article of her own during the festival, pairing it down to meet the required word length. I'm sorry I didn't catch where it would be published. It is a quantitative article on storytelling in science education. One of her mentors at ETSU, Dr. Joseph Sobol, had said something about there not being enough data-based research on storytelling as compared to all the anecdotal research that exists, so Margaret was trying to help correct that imbalance. But in this particular article, she needed to cut several hundred words from her original write-up. I sympathized!
Eugene Ward - I don't know if this quiet and gentle man who carries a twinkle in his eye would call himself a storyteller or not. I think he and Cynthia met while he was in Nebraska repairing a church organ and she was in Nebraska teaching storytelling. His son and daughter-in-law came to Olga's telling Friday night, so maybe Eugene and his wife live nearby, too. Eugene is a retired Episcopal minister and a book binder as well as being qualified to repair large organs. (The kind of organ that takes a whole caravan of trucks to carry away the parts and bring them back again.)
He also loves to cook. The food all weekend was so delicious and nourishing!
Marissa Holden - Marissa is a certified massage therapist and a massage instructor in Louisville. I think Cynthia said that her sons and Marissa grew up going to Sunday school together. Marissa had been out to the Storyteller's Riverhouse to give massages before. This time, since there would be so many people there, Marissa had brought a colleague, Cori, to help out.
Marissa also brought a large set of stones that could be heated in a "turkey baster" of water and used to give a different kind of massage for those people who were willing to pay a little more. ($75 vs. $60, I think.) She and Cori spoke of the rocks as being "picky" - if you don't wash them and oil them and put them away after every massage, they get rough and pitted in protest. I loved how both women treated the rocks as living beings, capable of relationship and worthy of respect.
At the end of the weekend, after I had had two massages, Marissa said at dinner, "Hope, you are just glowing! If you can't afford to get regular massages at home, you should see if there is a massage school in Indianapolis. Sometimes massage schools offer discounted massages in return for your filling out student evaluation forms." I'm going to check this out.
Cori Brinson - Cori is a certified massage therapist and a Journeyman, I think she called it, certified to do plumbing, electricity, and other construction and renovation work. Although I love many (all!) of the festival participants, Cori is the person I miss most, because I don't know if I will ever see or hear from her again. Everyone else I will probably run into again somewhere down the line. Cori had a powerful, powerful effect on me.
If our lives were truly folk tales, Cori would be a knight in my story, and her friend would be known as Marissa the Wise.
Olga Loya - Olga is a bi-lingual teller, Spanish and English, with some knowledge of the Aztec language, now, too. She is based in San Jose, California. She had been a featured teller here in Indianapolis for the Hoosier Storytelling Festival one year, so I already knew that I would enjoy her telling of the Aztec Creation Story. More about this, separately.
But first, more about Liz Warren's grail workshop that first morning...
THREE - Grail Highlights
Liz tells her students who are interested in telling long stories, "If you can just get your mouth moving, the story will tell itself. Sure, you can develop the layers and all that later, but don't worry about memorizing the story. You WON'T forget. The story will take care of you."
I asked her how she could tell for over an hour without needing a sip of water or even to clear her throat.
She said, "You do have to be physically healthy to tell these long stories. Also, I started hydrating myself a week in advance, and just before I started telling last night I drank a whole bottle of water."
Then Liz opened the deeper discussion by asking people what images they remembered from the story.
Priscilla said, "The wasteland!"
Liz said, "What did the wasteland look like to you, Priscilla?" and we were off.
The discussion was so rich!
As Liz said later in the weekend, the expertise of many of the listeners was as extensive, in some ways, as the expertise of the tellers.
But from other things she said about using the grail story with mythology students at her college, I think that rich discussion doesn't bubble up just in a group of storytellers. The power of the stories themselves combines in a uniquely satisfying way with the power of the format that she and Jim May developed:
1) Tell/listen to a long story in the evening...
2) Dream/reflect more or less silently during the night...
3) Talk/workshop in a group the following morning.
And now we know that when this format is repeated three nights in row - Shazzam!
The long, strong stories and the special format combine to make a situation that can't help be rich for the people involved, can it?
I'd like to know how this sort of event works with a group of engineers, say. Would they jump into talking about metaphors as easily as this group did? Maybe occupation has nothing to do with it. Maybe people are only drawn to this type of thing if they are at a place in their lives where they are willing and able to help make the events happen and to take something meaningful from them.
For me, the following images and comments Friday morning were especially powerful. I suspect I will be meditating on them and "unpacking" them for years to come. They are in fairly random order. I don't remember, exactly, who said each thing. Everyone contributed something. Many, many more insights were expressed in the workshop than I jotted down.
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Liz said, "The grail story is meant for people whose calling is to speak. The hardest thing to do, for anyone, is to speak the right thing at the right moment."
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Perceval's mentor told him to stop asking questions. People had various interpretations of what this meant, but I especially resonated with what Megan said: "This was so his gift would no longer be sprayed everywhere. You have to get into your armor. You have to contain your gift in order to honor it, and share it. Also, you must 'fail' in order to honor it. The story is great because Perceval screws up so much."
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David, I think, said about Perceval's two trips to the Fisher King, "We experience divinity and are wounded by it. We must live a full life in order to be ready to return to the experience of divinity." In other words, there are no short-cuts.
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David also said, "We don't know how to treat our actual mothers, so who cares if we realize that the earth is our mother, too. Have you seen how we treat our mothers?"
My mother has been on my mind a lot these past few months, so I made a point, later, of asking David to elaborate. I asked him, "So how should I treat my mother? I feel frustrated because I don't always know what she needs from me."
He gave me some very good advice. He said, "Pretend you're the parent, and do what parents do for their children. Children can't always express their needs, right? So parents are observant, and they just try what they think will work. Do that with your mom."
He also said, "Parents don't expect their kids to feed them, so now that you are pretending to be a parent to your mother, don't expect her to keep feeding you. I don't mean just in terms of food, but financially and in terms of being a confidant, too."
I am not quoting him exactly, but maybe you can get the idea. David's words felt very good and useful to me. It is long past time to start "paying back" my parents' kindness.
(Not that I ever can fully repay them. Cori helped me to see, in another conversation, that love isn't about payment.)
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Unlike Perceval's mother and his mentor, the hermit just gives Perceval a blessing, no advice. The Hermit is our inner guide. He knows our whole story and is just waiting for us (for Perceval) to show up and tell it.
Mary Kane said, "It's like the ending of the Bal Shem Tov story: 'You know that you are truly healed when someone comes to tell you your story.' It means that you are not alone."
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Liz said that labyrinths were current and big at the time when the grail story was first being told. Medieval audiences would have understood immediately that Perceval was in a maze at first, not a labyrinth. He couldn't get out until his met his uncle. Then, with his uncle's help, he was no longer in a maze, but in a labyrinth.
In a labyrinth, there is only one path. In the labyrinth, Perceval still can't see where he is going, but it feels more purposeful, more unified. He is moving with more purpose. And now he can really speak to other people along the way. And hear them.
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Sara: At midlife, first you have to STOP, and rest, and listen. You realize that your parents do not exist just as your parents. They, too, are flawed human beings on their own paths.
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Somebody quoted Erikson (sp? What book would be good of his to read, I wonder?) as saying that at the end of your life, depending on how you live it, you will be either at a stage of integrity or a stage of despair ("It's too late!")
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Our sovereignty comes from us as authorities of the story and from our experience of the source of unconditional love.
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Liz said, "The story is the grail and we (storytellers) are the grail bearers. The community of listeners, including the teller, is the wounded king and everyone else waiting in the castle and in the wasteland, waiting for someone to ask:
'What ails thee?'
and
'Whom does the grail serve?'
We must serve the story."
********************
Liz said that the work we (tellers) do with a long story, the soulful inquiry that we make in preparing to tell it, allows us to offer the story with an open heart. We are able to say, "This is a balm to my wound. May it also offer you comfort."
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Perceval is not responsible for the answer, only the question. But it's very hard to figure out when/what/how to ask.
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Sometimes a long story seems impossible, but if we are drawn to it, it's worth trying to make it work for us as tellers.
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Dennis quoted Elizabeth Ellis from a talk she gave at the powerful Denver NSN conference. (The National Storytelling Network conference was in Denver in 2001, I think, and it is still feeding many of us. It was where I first learned about David Novak's Storyteller's Compass, for example.)
Elizabeth Ellis told Dennis, "Fear is a shape-shifter. It disguises itself as depression, anxiety, and other things."
********************
Someone quoted Carol Birch as saying "It's not my job to be the healer. I just put the story out there."
Liz, too, said, "I'm a storyteller, not a healer."
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Liz talked of being both a teacher and a storyteller and how it is important to ask yourself which role you are playing when. She said, "Last night I was a storyteller. This morning I am a teacher." We do a disservice to our stories and to our listeners when we try to be both at the same time.
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It is important to give the story back, to not hoard our authority. Sometimes it is tempting to refuse to return it (to tell it), to instead keep "researching" it, or whatever. But a story has to have the freedom to live in the world and to do the work that it is meant to do.
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On mentoring (or parenting!): There is a fine line between discipline and suppression.
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David talked about his own experiences of story as crucible.
He talked about how his signature "Eeensy Weensy Spider" story (I love this story!) grew and deepened via a visit to an adult friend in the hospital, how David was trying unsuccessfully to think what to say to his friend, but then his friend said, "Tell me the one about the spider." And David realized that that story was much more powerful than a "simple" nursery rhyme.
This reminded me of how Brian Sturm, back when we were both members of the Bloomington (Indiana) Storytellers' Guild, helped me to realize that one of my favorite stories to tell, "The Story Stone," is not one to be trivialized or tossed up lightly. He helped me to see the shamanic value in it, and encouraged me to take more responsibility for telling it respectfully. I am so grateful to him.
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Lucinda: What's your patch of the whole, BIG story world, and how are you going to be sovereign of that patch? And are you going to remember that there ARE other gardens?
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David: Don't avoid enigma. Address the loose ends in a story, but you don't have to tie them all up. As soon as people think they know what's going to happen, they stop listening. An enigmatic story keeps them listening.
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But more than anything else, what Liz said at the end of her workshop Friday morning about what the grail story teaches us is what I want to have tattooed on the inside of my arm:
"Seek to be heart ready. Grail paths and grail castles can not be predicted or scheduled."
FOUR - Afternoon activities
Over lunch on Friday, I thought about my options for the two afternoon breaks.
I definitely wanted to hear what Rebecca saw in my palms, so I signed up for that right away.
I also signed up for TWO massages - a stone massage that would involve going deep with heat, and a traditional massage that would involve going deep with finger pressure and muscle manipulation.
Oh, I waited a bit to give other people a chance to sign up, but when there were still slots open after lunch, I gave in to my greed for professional massage. When I lived in Japan, I was making big bucks and could afford to have someone come to my apartment every week to give me a massage. It made a huge difference in my ability to handle stress. It has been more than ten years since I left Japan. I was so overdue for a massage. And two massages in two days? Wouldn't that be heaven?
The massage therapists had set up their tables in two rooms of the house where I had been assigned a bed. One room was a bedroom, with a door that closed and everything, but the other room was the dining room, right out there in the middle of the path between the kitchen and the front room! Yikes.
"We have screens," Cori told me when I asked her about it. "And we will lock the kitchen door so that no one will come through that way."
The whole weekend, Cori went out of her way to make me feel at ease. And not in an oversolicitous, mothery-smothery way, nor in a passive "whatever" way, but in a way that felt actively, truly generous and kind. Loving. I can't say enough about how good it was for me to be around her.
There were other options for the afternoons: Priscilla announced that she had brought boxes of collage materials in addition to the blank folders and blank spiral notebooks that she had brought for everyone to use if they wanted. People could work on collages in the same house where the palm readings would be.
There were three festival houses all together: Cynthia's Storyteller's Riverhouse b&b, plus two other b&b houses whose owners were letting Cynthia use them for the festival. They were all charming.
I think there was also a "story play" swap on Saturday afternoon that involved songs and drumming or something.
Some people took walks. The river was soothing, and spring was in the air.
Some people took "cell phone drives" out of town, since most cell phones didn't work in Bethlehem. (Sing hallelujah! I hope that never changes.)
Some people took naps, but every bed I had access to was in a space where other, noisier activities were going on. Music or conversation or cooking or something. On Friday afternoon, after my palm reading but before my hot stone massage, I went to my car out of desperation and toppled over onto the back seat. I was so very, very tired.
While I drooled there on the back seat, I thought some more about the morning's workshop.
In the second half, Liz had given out some handouts with questions to prompt personal stories based on the grail images. One of the questions was, "Do you know a time in your life when you needed to be asked, 'What ails thee?' How about a time when you failed to ask the question?"
Priscilla and Margaret were my partners. I knew exactly what to tell about.
My most recent "grail moment" had taken place on the drive to the airport a couple days earlier. I was leaving Florida, coming back to Indiana. My father was driving, my mother was in the front passenger seat, and I was in the back seat. My mother turned around and said to me, "With this CLL I have, the doctors are not able to say anything real about my life expectancy, so I've decided I'm just going to say what I want to say."
My breathing stopped. I leaned forward so she wouldn't have to shout over the back of the seat. "Yes?"
"You should go see a doctor. Get a check-up. If there's anything wrong with you, and if they find it early enough, they can do a lot more than if you wait until you have symptoms."
I sat back, stunned. I wanted to be polite, wanted to be a loving daughter, but I felt like laughing. This was what she was spending the cancer card on? This was nothing new! I have hated doctors my whole life, my mother has been trying to get me to visit them my whole adult life, and I have refused my whole adult life. Surely there was something else she wanted to say to me!
But I missed the opportunity to ask her.
In the workshop, when we came back together as a group after working in pairs and triads, I told my grail moment story again.
Someone said, "Well she brought it up. Death, I mean. So now you can talk about it, too."
Someone else said, "There will be another chance for you to ask her, 'What do you really want to say?'"
But then Megan said, "Maybe the question is, 'What does she really want to hear?'"
And that zinged true for me. Whew. Yes. At that point in the workshop, I felt I knew what to do next. Thank you, Megan!
But now, slumped over in the back of my car, I thought, "But what if what my mother wants to hear, what if what will heal her, is me saying, 'I promise to go see a doctor for a check-up'?" If I say that, I will have to mean it, because even though I'm a storyteller, I'm not a liar. I want my words to have integrity."
F*ck!
And THEN I remembered some more of the grail story:
"Perceval went back to the Fisher King and this time was able to ask him, 'What ails thee?'
And the Fisher King told him, and was healed. Not cured, but healed. Then he was free to die, and Perceval became the next Fisher King."
Now I was crying as well as drooling.
I do not want my mother to die.
FIVE - Tattoos
Late Friday afternoon, by the time I had cried a bucket and had my palm read and had my body massaged with hot stones, I was just one limp lump of emotion.
Cori joked, "I can see that you're stoned!" (stone massage, get it?) and I probably did appear as if I were on drugs. I sat on the sofa in the front room of "our" house because I was afraid that if I lay down upstairs, I would fall asleep and miss Olga's telling.
Cori was finished with her massage clients for the day, and was working on a beautiful colored-pencil drawing of a waterfall with a bonsai tree at the side. In the middle of the drawing was a large, carefully-drawn blank space.
"What are you working on?" I asked her.
"My tattoo."
"You have a tattoo?"
"I have eighteen of them. I'm trying to get one for every year I'm alive."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-two."
TWENTY-TWO??!!?? That woke me out of my stupor a bit. This beautiful, mature woman who had been like a champion for me the whole weekend was actually young enough to be my daughter?!!
I knew Cori was helping a lot of people that weekend besides me, and that, according to Marissa, Cori was "always like this" (ie - kind, generous, eager to help out.) But I also believed Cori when she looked at me with those gorgeous blue eyes and said, "Hope, I would do anything for you."
When I heard she was twenty-two, I became all the more determined just to treasure what Cori gave me, to give back if I could, but above all to be careful what I asked her for.
Still...
"Can I see the tattoo that you're working on?"
She pulled her shirt up to show a stunning, large black cat on her shoulder. I think it was a cheetah. I could see how the blank space in the paper drawing of the waterfall would fit the shape of the cheetah on her arm very neatly.
"The guy who does my tattoos charges $89.95 an hour. This whole design will take approximately four hours, so I am having it done in stages."
She pulled her shirt back down and went back to her drawing. "I have some tattoos that I regret."
"Really? Like what?"
"There is a celtic knot in the middle of my back that I regret." She lifted her shirt again and showed it to me.
I put my hand on it. "It's beautiful! Why do you regret getting it?"
"I can't see it. I can't enjoy it."
I wanted to say, "Your lover enjoys it, I bet." But that was exactly the kind of thing that I was determined NOT to say.
Never mind questions of sexual orientation. (I am usually only attracted to men.) Never mind questions of fidelity. (Cori was already in a relationship.) It is just plain ridiculous and icky for a 45-year-old to to have a crush on a 22-year-old.
When it was time for Olga's telling, I walked over to the Schoolhouse with Cori and Marissa, but I found a seat by myself. I knew I wasn't done crying yet.
SIX - Aztec Journey
Everyone who entered the Schoolhouse on Friday night was given a rattle or small drum or other percussion instrument. On the platform in front of the chairs, Olga had set up a small altar with fresh flowers and objects from Mexico.
When everyone had gathered and Olga was ready to begin, she asked us to stand up and help her invite blessings from all directions. I was pretty out of it by this time, but I think she said that what we were doing was what the Aztecs did, too. In any case, it felt really good and grounding to slowly and deliberately, as directed by Olga's invocations, shake our rattles first in the four compass directions and then above and below and center.
Olga also had a hand-out for each of us that gave the names of some of the Aztec gods that she would be telling about. She had us repeat each of them with her so that when they came up in the story they would already be a tiny bit familiar to us. We would be less likely to say "Huh?" and be taken out of the story.
ALL of the names were new to me. (All those "z's" and "h's" and "x's"!) ALL of the Aztec Creation Story was new to me, too. I think it was new to most people in the room, and that made it all the more wonderful to experience.
At one point, Olga invited us all to wail like one of the goddesses: "I'm hungry! Tengo ambre!" (I'm not sure of the spelling.) I stopped after a moment or two because it felt too powerful, too real. I say this not as criticism but as compliment.
At another point, there was a procession of characters in the story, and Olga invited us to stand up and process around the room with her for a bit, rattling our rattles or drumming our drums. She banged on a large drum to set the tempo. We snaked around and past and between each other as if we had all been born to doing such things, and found our seats again easily as well. Olga said later that she had just decided to do it on the spur of the moment, as a stretch break, and had been surprised, herself, by how seamlessly it fit the story. It stretched our legs without taking us out of the story. It was brilliant.
In Olga's workshop the next morning, Jackie mentioned something that I had felt, too: things came in fours instead of threes, in the Aztec story, which felt odd, but then, just as we were used to four being the magic number, along came a fifth brother, and we were nudged out of our complacency again.
I thought of Lucinda's comment about there being many gardens. And of someone else's comment about how once you think that your story is "How It Is" instead of "How I See It," you have lost perspective.
What a gift, what a gift it was, to have the Aztec story told in between the two medieval stories!
In Olga's workshop, she passed around some of the objects that she had had on the platform with her the night before. She talked about which characters they represented.
Since we had already introduced ourselves the morning before, Olga had us stand in a circle and each say our names followed by where we were from and a sound and movement from that place. Then we went around again, and when each person had said his or her name and made the sound and movement, we all repeated the sound and movement back.
I loved how how tactile, how fleshy, Olga's telling and workshop were.
In the second part of her workshop, Olga, perhaps following Liz' lead, had some questions to prompt personal stories based on images from the long story. I think her questions were a handout-in-progress, because she only read them aloud to us. I jotted down all of the questions, but didn't catch all of the connections to the story. But for example:
"Tell about a time when you felt split into positive and negative, like so-and-so, the hungry goddess. What happened?"
"Tell about a time when you were stubbornly brave like so-and-so, the little red ant. What happened?"
"Tell about a time when you were told not to do something but you did it anyway, like the musicians. What happened?"
People worked with partners at first. When we came back together as a group, some people told their stories to the group, too. The theme of hunger - spiritual, emotional, physical - came up again and again.
Cynthia or somebody mentioned the children's book Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, and how the monsters say, "We'll eat you up, we love you so." She told about when her own children were babies, or maybe it was when she was working as a registered nurse in a hospital, she would hear people say, "I just want to eat up those cute little babies!"
The story I had told Priscilla during pair-work was about "a time when I felt lust as so-and-so did in the story." Hearing the group conversation, I realized that part of every crush I've ever had has been a hunger to be like the person I had a crush on.
Maybe one of the many reasons I have a crush on Cori is that she could fix the dripping faucet in my house!
One of the cooks came in to say that there had been a brief power outage and the stove had stopped working. It was working again now, but lunch would be "at 4:30 instead of 12:30. No, wait! I mean 12:30 instead of 12:00!"
But it was too late: everyone was already wailing "I-I-I'm hungry! Ten-n-n-go ambre!"
And laughing.
SEVEN - A palm reading.
Rebecca's palm reading room was tucked away on the top floor in a secret corner of the third house.
She asked me to hold up both of my hands so that the palms faced her. As she looked back and forth between them she said:
"You are very intellectual. You like to think a lot, and to observe a long time before you make a plan. Sometimes all this thinking distracts you from feeling what you need to feel. Sometimes you get so attached to your plans that you even argue, politely, with God!
"It takes you a long time to grow up. It's a very slow unfolding of the rose bud.
"You're very picky. You're very intense." She laughed. "You are not very easy to get along with!"
Now wait a minute, I thought. I may argue with God from time to time, but I am not one of the people who are stressing out the cooks with their ten million food "requirements."
But... I guess I can see how someone might find me hard to get a long with. And to be honest, I'm a little proud of my pickiness.
I tuned back in to what Rebecca was saying.
"In love you are looking for someone with very high ideals, someone who will love not only you unconditionally, but also love the whole world."
Then it was my turn to laugh. "I knew it! I've been looking for Jesus! That's why I'm single."
She nodded. "But that's okay. Jesus is in everyone. You'll find Him in the person you finally fall in love with."
She looked at my palms some more.
"Expressing yourself is important to you. You like being part of a team, it doesn't matter if you're the leader or not, but you need to be heard. Your individuality is important to you. You forget how hard you work."
She said some other things and then pulled out a deck of large cards. "Pull a card to represent this moment in time," I think she said.
The card I pulled was of Eagle Woman. Yup, I thought, I know Eagle Woman. Eagle, hawk, crow, chickadee. Yup, these are my people.
Then Rebecca took out a different deck and said, "Ask a question silently and pull out a card."
In my head I asked, "What else can you tell me about my love life?" I pulled...the instruction card for the deck! It said, "There are no rules. The sky's the limit."
The next day I went to Cori for my second massage. She asked me, "Is this your first time being naked in public?"
"Wait. Is this being naked in public?" I asked back. I was naked, but I was covered up to my chin by a sheet, behind screens, with someone I trusted. But I said, "I posed for a sculptor once, a long time ago."
Cori's massage was deep and purposeful. She leaned in with her whole body. As she worked on my body she said, "The more you 'help' me, the harder I have to work, so just try to relax. It's like getting a tattoo. If you tense up, the ink just sits on the skin. If you can relax, the ink has a chance to sink in."
I was carrying SO much tension in my neck and limbs, even after the previous day's hot stone massage. I can't begin to describe how good it felt to let it go.
Cori said, "You don't have any tattoos, do you?"
"No. That just has never interested me."
"I could see you with a tattoo."
"Yeah? What do you see?"
She thought about it. "I see you with... a tattoo the size of a folded dollar bill, just here on your arm." She stopped manipulating my neck muscles for a moment and touched my right upper arm. "A butterfly...but not just any old butterfly. One with a body of a cat..not a cheetah, though. A tiger."
"That sounds wonderful! Why do you think that would fit me?"
"Because you're beautiful. Maybe you've been judged on your color or your shape, but you're beautiful. And when you're feeling confident in yourself, you are fiery like a tiger."
Then she laughed and said, "Hey! I should go into business doing this!"
A little while later I asked her, "If you were going into the personality-reading-tattoo-design business, how much would you charge?"
She thought about it for a while. "I don't think I would really want to do that as a business. I mean, I get that people study to do palm reading and all, but someone could just bullshit to get by, and who would know the difference?"
"But you wouldn't bullshit. I know you well enough at least to know that."
"No, but... I like the idea of designing a tattoo for you because I've been hanging out with you all weekend, getting to know you. I just want to do it for you."
I asked her if she would really do the drawing for me. She said she would, but then she remembered that she and Marissa were leaving right after dinner and there probably wouldn't be time.
"I know!" she said. "I'll have your address from your massage check. I'll mail the design to you."
I tried to let her out of it by saying, "It's enough that you described it for me. Thank you!"
But she mentioned it again when she and Marissa were saying goodbye to everyone, so I'm letting myself hope that she really does get the design down on paper, that she really does send it to me. I will frame it and give it a place of honor in my home.
After I had turned over and Cori was working on my back, someone tried to come in through the locked kitchen door. Cori covered me up completely and went to see what was going on. I heard later that someone had left a check in the dining room (aka the massage room) and the people who were going to pick it up had to pick it up by a certain time. They couldn't wait until my massage was over. I think Cori thought, "This is exactly what Hope was afraid of!" and tried to fight the people off.
I was more or less oblivious, though, and felt safe enough under my sheet, especially when I heard Cynthia's voice. She and Mary Hamilton are two other people that I trust completely, but Cori had no way of knowing that.
Later, Cynthia apologized, but I told her not to worry about it. I said, "The world needs to see more fat, naked women, right? To balance things out?" (I don't know why I said this. It wasn't as if "the world" was seeing my naked body.)
But Cynthia said, "Fat, naked, beautiful women, Hope."
I tell you, I got a lot of positive strokes during the weekend!
And Rebecca said, more than once, "Our hands change. The lines in our hands change as we live our lives. What I see in your hands now is not necessarily what will be there next year, or even tomorrow."
I don't think she was bullshitting, either.
EIGHT - Tristan and Iseult
On Saturday night, the final night, Priscilla told her version of "Tristan and Iseult."
It was the longest story of the three, the only one with a brief intermission. I wondered how that would work, if we would be able to get back into the story after stepping out for a moment, but Priscilla stopped with someone tied to a stake surrounded by people shouting "Start the fire! Start the fire!" or something like that. So we left on a suspenseful note, and after we had re-gathered, she brought us actively and immediately back into the story by inviting us to be the people shouting.
"The Romance of Tristan and Iseult" is a sad story, and Priscilla told it well. I knew that Iseult of the White Hands was going to trick Tristan into thinking that Iseult the Fair did not love him enough to come to him. I knew it, and I still found myself on the edge of my seat, hoping desperately that somehow, this time, the story would end differently. This time, Iseult of the White Hands would not lie about the color of the ship's sails. This time, Tristan would not give up and die before seeing for himself whether or not Iseult the Fair was on board.
But they did. And Tristan died, as David observed the next morning, still enchanted.
After Priscilla's very moving telling, people went to Cynthia's house for dessert and conversation, as usual.
Priscilla and I and some other people stayed in the dining room for a bit, winding down, talking about this and that as well as about the story.
Mary Hamilton's husband, Charles, was in the dining room, too. He had been able to come into town that night for the telling. He made me both laugh and think twice about the potion. He said, "'The potion made me do it!' Hah! You could say that about a lot of things, couldn't you! But what proof is there?"
Marilyn and Stephanie asked, "How did Tristan and Iseult live together in the woods for three whole years without her getting pregnant?"
Someone said, "Iseult knew the herbs!"
But someone else said, "This way of joining - under influence of a romantic potion - is infertile. The potion wears off and they realize they are out in the woods, starving, wearing tattered clothes...The potion dissipates and they are left with each other."
Someone else said, "We hold onto the idea that this kind of romantic love is good and possible and that if we don't have it, it is the fault of 'the barons.' Not the fault of the idea itself."
Someone said, "Tristan can't ever really deal with the real person of Iseult. He dies enchanted. It's so sad, but we have to let Tristan die within us, too."
Someone said, "Tristan's story is the opposite of Perceval's. Tristan's story is disunifying, unraveling."
Someone else said, "Iseult can't be a healer, either. In this romantic kind of love, neither one is ever able to be complete as male or female."
Meanwhile, a large, intense, and perfectly round discussion circle formed in the front room. People had now been through three long stories and two intensive workshops together, and I think they felt safe and confident enough with each other and with the work to get right to it Saturday night, instead of waiting until the next morning.
Also, maybe some people knew that they would have to leave before lunch the next day, and they didn't want to miss a chance to go deeper with this third story.
It made for a sort of fragmented Sunday morning, though. On Sunday morning when Priscilla officially started her workshop, she said, "People have told me that I have the attention span of an Irish setter, so bear with me."
But the fragmentation was from more than that. There was a bit of "we already talked about all this last night" from some people. And every time Priscilla paused to collect her thoughts, it seemed that someone else was standing up to say, "I have to be leaving now. Goodbye! Goodbye!"
I don't know what the answer is to this fragmentation. I understand that some people had miles to drive before they slept and that not everyone can take off from their day job Thursday-Monday, but I think that if the alternative is for everyone to go right from an hour-plus story to a 3-hour workshop at night, that would be very hard on the teller.
In any case, after I finished my ice cream and kahlua on Saturday night I walked right through the circle in the front room, giddy with the thought of having a bedroom to myself (some people had already left) and a full night's sleep. I guess I'm sorry that I missed whatever insights came up in that intense circle, but I also believe that there are no accidents. I had come to Bethlehem to hear Priscilla tell her version of "Tristan and Iseult" and I got to do that. Everything else was icing.
And the workshop Sunday morning was really useful, in spite of the fragmentation.
Priscilla shared some of what she had learned about "seducing long stories and/or wresting them to the ground," which prompted others to share ideas, too:
- Do like Don Davis suggests and first talk about the story to the people in your life, rather than trying to actually tell it.
- Read every version, in every language you know. Priscilla read "Tristan and Iseult" in French as well as in English, as a way of getting under its skin.
- Talk the story to yourself while bouncing a ball. Then bring the story back into your body by spending time moving as each character.
- Do timed freewriting a la Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind book as each character from your story. Write a letter from one character to another. Write a personal ad for Iseult of the White Hands. Look at Writing from the Body, by John Lee, for more ideas.
- Remember that what calls you in a story is not necessarily what keeps you. You may not know why it called you in the first place. Be open to discovery.
- Do like playwrights do and write "the missing scenes" to deepen your understanding of the plot and characters. Go backwards and look at the missed opportunities, the forks, the places where the characters could have chosen differently and avoided disaster. Again quoting Donald Davis, "Note the points of 'trouble coming!'"
- Rich, symbolic imagery is as important as the plot.
- Look at the geology of the story. Liz said she did a lot of background research in preparing to tell the grail story. She thinks of using a crochet hook now and then as she tells, dipping down into all those hidden layers from time to time in the telling to expose a little something of what's below.
- David suggests distilling the imagery: look at all the times "green" is mentioned, for example. It seems a throw-away thing, but it is actually carefully crafted into the story. It's important to compress those images but not to lose them.
Priscilla also talked about how to find and develop venues for sharing long stories. She said that she since she was making a good living telling to children, she decided to stop trying to make long-telling support her financially and to think of it as a hobby. She started offering to tell her long story to friends and family in house concerts (in people's homes.) People will come to someone's house for the free wine and chese, but later, when you offer a "one woman show" in a theatre or other larger venue, they will come because they know you and know that they love your storytelling. There will be a sense of urgency then: "this weekend only!" David shared some wonderful thoughts about "mouse economy" vs. "elephant economy," and encouraged all of us to take a "mouse approach" to our work. I don't know if he has already written an article about this somewhere, but if not, he should! Basically, storytellers should not be trying to join or woo the elephants (big media corporations or stadium audiences or whatever.) Nor do they need to worry about them. Ultimately, elephants are afraid of mice. All mice need to do to thrive is to just keep doing what we do and stay out of the way of elephants. Ultimately, elephants are afraid of mice. They lift their big feet and go "eek!" when they see us. (Can you tell that I have already joined the conspiracy of mice? I wish I could explain it as well as David does.) One other group of thoughts that resonated for me during the Sunday morning workshop: "If there is enough repetition, I can be the story. Tristan does have to die, and so do my unrealistic expectations of love. But usually we are not telling these stories as part of a ritual, part of a church service. If we were, each repetition would get full weight, and we wouldn't worry about the audience losing interest, because they would be there in order to live the story along with us, take on the skins of the characters, like the Aztec priests acting out the sacrificial maiden part of their creation story, or like Christians re-enacting the Last Supper with the ritual of communion. But we are telling these stories as balm, not ritual. As entertainment and illumination, not manipulation. We are offering a conversational art form, with all the give and take, all the responsibility and detachment, that that implies."
NINE - Handouts
I love handouts.
Priscilla said that she had no handouts, and so suggested that we all take the questions that Liz and Olga had provided and work with them later on our own in terms of the Tristan/Iseult story, too.
But I think that Priscilla is a walking handout. Her bread-and-butter comes from working with kids, and I think this has honed her ability to come up with just the right song or citation or whatever at the right moment when she's working with adults, too.
For example, when it was time to work in pairs during Olga's workshop, I turned to Priscilla and said, "Are you willing to be my partner again or would you like a change?"
She said, "I want to be your partner again. Do you know that song?" And then she sang something she had heard from a friend's kid:
"Will you be my partner to walk in the woods?
Will you be my partner to walk in the woods?
Will you be my partner to walk in the woods?
For I am brave, And you are brave, And I am brave, too."
Priscilla said, "I use it with kids as a zipper song. You can ask for other scary things and put them in instead of 'walk in the woods.'"
Since I've been home, I've been singing to myself, "Will you be my partner to go see a doctor?..."
********************
After Liz' workshop, I think Priscilla realized we were all sort of zinging from the deep work with the grail images. In the moments before lunch was served, she taught us this actively grounding round:
"Standing like a tree with my roots dug deep,
Branches wide and open.
Down comes the wind!
Down comes the rain!
Down through a heart that is open to be
Standing like a tree..."
"Do the roots hard!" she said. So we all bent our knees and curved our fingers into roots, bouncing firmly through the first line:
Standing like a tree, with my roots dug deep...
"Then lift your hands up over your head."
Branches wide and open...
"Let one hand sweep down in front of you..."
Down comes the wind...
"Let the other hand sweep down..."
Down comes the rain...
"Now bring your hands back up to meet over your head, and bring them down clasped over the front of you."
Down through a heart that is open to be...
"And you're back to the first stance..."
Standing like a tree, with my roots dug deep...
Priscilla said this was a good song to do before storytelling, with or without the audience. This is my new favorite song!
******************
Priscilla taught us to take a towel and thwack it down on the ground in front of us, as a way to disperse nervous energy. Keeping thwacking until you get into a real thwack, not a mere "phluff!"
******************
Here are some other books, songs, and movies that various people suggested during the festival: - "The Fisher King" - Movie starring Jeff Bridges
- Healing the Fisher King, by John Matthews. I came home and found I already had this book in my personal collection! I think Dan Keding had encouraged me to buy it one time when he was here in Indy for the Hoosier Storytelling Festival and asked me to take him to a used bookstore during his break between tellings. It's about time I read it!
- A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, by Daniel H. Pink. Priscilla was excited about this book because the author prescribes going to storytelling festivals as a way to cope.
- The Grammar of Fantasy, by Gianni Rodari. Priscilla says this is her "Fahrenheit 451 book: I walk through the woods memorizing it so that I can save it from disaster if need be." It does sound like a fun and useful book for tellers and teachers of telling.
- A book on Aztec culture that Olga passed around during her workshop. Maybe someone reading this will let me know the author and title (please!)
- The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays, by Caroline Knapp. Priscilla told me that there is an essay in this book on "girl crushes" and why we get them.
- "If I Had Wings" - I think that is the name of the very beautiful and moving song that Jackie and David happened to sing Sunday morning as they were waiting to be called to breakfast. I hope I can find a recording of it somewhere.
- The grace that Cynthia leads at every meal at her Storyteller's Riverhouse is one I find myself singing now at every meal at home: "Thank You for this food, this food, this glorious, glorious food! And for the animals, and the vegetables, and the minerals, that make it possible. Amen. Amen. Amen."
- We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, by Robert Johnson. Priscilla and David both recommended this book for a deeper understanding of the Tristan/Iseult story.
- "Tristan and Isolde" - recent movie. Stephanie loved the beautiful actors in it, but Priscilla hated the cop-out ending. I want to see it and decide for myself.
- Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays, by John Ball. David or Margaret or someone said this had proved useful to her for digging into the plots of her stories, too.
- Orality and Literacy, by Walter J. Ong. David or Margaret or somebody suggested this as good food for thought about "oral mind" vs. "aural mind."
- A song by John Hiatt (sp?) - Liz and David started singing this during one of the breaks, but all I caught was that it had been recorded on a Tellabration CD at some point. I loved the words that I was able to jot down: "You ask 'What should I say?' but you can not command. The mountains will move in their own time."
TEN - Evaluation prompts.
My angel card for this weekend was Understanding.
What I know now is:
I really love the format of 1) hear a long story in the evening, 2) sleep on it, 3) explore the story instensely with a group the next morning. It makes for an incredibly rich experience.
What I'm wondering is:
Will there be a Going Deep festival next year, and if so who is in charge of it? Surely it would be different tellers as well as different stories, but these three tellers got the festival off the ground. Are they planning to work together to select and hire future tellers, or would they each rather keep going on their own with the long stories that they brought this year, rather than building the festival itself? If so, are Cynthia and Mary planning to run the festival themselves?
Would Cynthia and Mary even be willing to host it again? I think this festival was much, much harder on them than their WOW Weekends. Are they saying "Never again!" or "Okay, this definitely stretched our envelope, but it's worth doing again"?
I hope that they got enough back from it to make them want to host it again. I love the attention to detail that they both pay in order to make sure everyone has wonderful time. Cynthia arranges flowers and passes snacks, but she also goes around and...I don't know how to explain it exactly, because it is very subtle. But powerful. She goes around and balances everyone's energy without playing favorites and by applying little songs and short stories. Mary listens to and distills everything people tell her, so that she can repeat it back to them in a highly focused way and help them get clearer on what they need. Again, hard to describe, but hugely valuable.
In other words, their "innkeeping" is very personal, and maybe would not survive a transition to a big festival. On the other hand, it would not survive if not enough people attend a small festival and/or if the fee is not large enough.
None of this is mine to figure out. I have more than enough of my own business to take care of. But you did ask what I was wondering.
Something I hope will be different next time is:
I hope there will be a designated "silent house" for naps and absence of conversation during the afternoons. I wouldn't have missed my sleep deprivation adventure this year for the world, but I am not necessarily looking for another one.
What I hope never changes is:
The feeling of connecting with the Source of Unconditional Love. That, and the absence of cell phones.
Oh! I also liked that local friends and family were invited to the evening tellings.
Something quotable for our marketing is:
I don't know what to say here! It was just wonderful!
Saturday, March 04, 2006
My Weekly 10 Random Thoughts, a la byn, whose site is still under reconstruction:
1. Today someone threw up by the computers here in the YA department just before the library closed. Twenty plus years as a librarian and teacher, and two summers as a camp counselor, and I had never had someone throw up. One minute the patron was asking me for a book, the next she was running for the restroom with an overflowing hand.
I had to call the Children's Department to find out what to do.
I sprinkled the special sawdust ("Now fortified with enzymes to counteract unpleasant odors...instantly!") and taped signs to book carts at each end of the long vomit trail, signs that said, "Please walk around," because people were walking right through the piles of sawdust! Good grief!
The Runescape boys kept on with their computer games while I sprinkled. What's a little vomit on the carpet when there are treasures to be won?
Now the library is closed, but I am procrastinating by blogging because I do not want to don the special OSHA gloves and sweep up the vomit-drenched sawdust.
"Imagine if there were big piles of chunks!" said one of the Runescape boys on his way out.
Oh, I'd rather not.
2. Today's Question of the Day for people who needed to use the library phone to call their folks to come pick them up was, "Do you have a My Space account?"
More "no's" than "yes's" but I suspect the people with My Space accounts are tweaking their profiles instead of talking to their librarians.
I understand the dangers of My Space and other online communties, but I also thought this draft of a talk about "Why Youth Heart MySpace" had important food for thought.
3. Aren't the Oscars this weekend?
4. A few days ago, my car's engine stopped working just as I was entering a roundabout that exited onto a bridge.
I pulled over to the side in the middle of the roundabout because that seemed safer than pulling over to the side of a narrow bridge, but it was still pretty scary.
Did I wish for a cell phone? No.
But I was grateful to the Good Samaritan who stopped and lent me hers to call the Motor Club.
And I was grateful to the police officer who gave me the authority to say to the Motor Club, "An hour is unacceptable. You need to get someone here in fifteen minutes. I am in the middle of a roundabout!" I was also grateful that he waited with me and didn't make me feel like an idiot for something I couldn't help.
I know I need to buy a new car, but now I have put another $500 worth of repairs into my old one. I think I'll drive it a little while longer.
5. I swept up the sawdust, but there is a still a mess. Maybe if I dawdle with my blog long enough, the maintenance worker will show up and unlock the closet so that I can use the upstairs vacumn cleaner instead of going all the way downstairs for the one in the Program Room.
6. My friend Beth's question after my last post makes me think, "Hmm. What if the mayor IS thinking of buying up my whole neighborhood?"
I don't think he is.
But how would that work, exactly, if he were?
Man, I was really hoping never to have to move again. But if I do have to move, I'm going to hold out for a two-car garage next time.
6.5 I do not want to go into the specifics of my neighborhood's situation in this blog, so don't ask me.
7. I still have not found a lottery blog to read. If I ever win the lottery big, I promise to blog about it, because wouldn't that be fun to read about?
8. The custodian brought me the vacumn, and went over it again himself. The carpet looks better, but it's going to need professional attention, too.
9. What would I do if someone threw up during a storytelling?
10. Here's wishing you and your bodily fluids a peaceful weekend.
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