Inside Stories

[Image: “Stories,” by Elias Ruiz Monserrat on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!)]

From whiskey river:

But what we call a “self” is actually just a story about our experience of life. And we construct the story because we’re trying to give some order to what is actually a remarkably chaotic process. And then we get seduced by the seeming consistency of the story that we’ve constructed, and instead of just relating directly to our experience, we try to relate to our experience in terms of the story.

(Ken McLeod [source: numerous citations around the Web, none canonical])

…and:

Just see, nothing is actually touching you when you just observe, when you don’t say “this should not be.” Pay attention to this wonderful power in you. Just witness without judgment, interference or attachment. Give it a chance.

(Mooji [source: numerous citations around the Web, none canonical])

…and:

One Source of Bad Information

There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.

This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
“Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.”

You live with this child, but you don’t know it.
You’re in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He’s uninformed, but he does want

To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas.
Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.

(Robert Bly [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Talking among Ourselves

In the rental cottage it comes to me,
how the four lives of myself
and my brothers
crisscross
like tracer bullets,
and how, from a distance maybe,
if you had the right kind of glasses,
there might appear to be a target
we all were aiming at
beyond that black escutcheon of cloud
above Santa Rosa Bay
as we lie on the deck
drinking tequila and beer,
our voices growing vague and weary
as time passes, until one of us
tells a story, more cordial than precise,
about climbing to the top of a magnolia tree
when he was ten, and falling. The rest of us
draw closer around the story
as we watch the great flattened cloud
raise its triangular wing
over the state of Florida. It is night
in Florida
and, in a moment, one of us will recall
the time our father, in a gray suit,
climbed the steps of an airliner
bound for Paris
and never came back. And one, or another,
will tell how our mother, more blond
and beautiful than ever
that spring, said,
You must now be soldiers,
and screamed and screamed. We will each
raise his head
and stare for a moment through the lighted gate
of the living room window
at our wives,
who are putting away the last of the supper dishes,
speaking among themselves
with the easy familiarity of women
whose husbands
are brothers. And one of us will begin so sing
an old song
that our father sang
before he went away, a song
about losing a fair woman
in the foggy, foggy dew,
and as the late chill rises off the bay
we will all remember
what we thought as children
when we heard him sing of the woman
who was not, and never could have been,
our mother
and of how an emptiness,
bigger than an ocean,
opened inside us, and one of us
will say, I think it is going to rain,
and we will get up
and go back inside.

(Charlie Smith [source])

…and:

Only Child

I never wished for a sibling, boy or girl.
Center of the universe,
I had the back of my parents’ car
all to myself. I could look out one window
then slide over to the other window
without any quibbling over territorial rights,
and whenever I played a game
on the floor of my bedroom, it was always my turn.

Not until my parents entered their 90s
did I long for a sister, a nurse I named Mary,
who worked in a hospital
five minutes away from their house
and who would drop everything,
even a thermometer, whenever I called.
“Be there in a jiff” and “On my way!”
were two of her favorite expressions, and mine.

And now that the parents are dead,
I wish I could meet Mary for coffee
every now and then at that Italian place
with the blue awning where we would sit
and reminisce, even on rainy days.
I would gaze into her green eyes
and see my parents, my mother looking out
of Mary’s right eye and my father staring out of her left,

which would remind me of what an odd duck
I was as a child, a little prince and a loner,
who would break off from his gang of friends
on a Saturday and find a hedge to hide behind.
And I would tell Mary about all that, too,
and never embarrass her by asking about
her nonexistence, and maybe we
would have another espresso and a pastry
and I would always pay the bill and walk her home.

(Billy Collins [source])