“The mind is like a richly woven
tapestry, in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses
and the designs drawn from the convolutions of the intellect…”
– Carson
McCullers
It is often that I think about stories, myths, and tales.
Those I hold captive in my mind, those friends have told me through the years,
the ones that I have yet to read, the ones I intend to write, the ones that
still leave imprints on my memory, the ones that haunt the darkness and feed
off the light…They are small pieces of our soul. They are the pieces that we
often overlook, the moments we taste when the wind falls around us and the sun
shines brightly on our faces. They are the pieces that crumble with every
broken heart, that ache to be shared with the world when anger flows through
us. They are the pieces of us that we tend to try to cover up and are those
pieces that we hold in front of us to hide the inner being we still don’t
understand. At night, they are the
pieces that hazily come together in our dreams, they talk to us when we are
afraid, they fill us when we are lonely and they also have the power to drain
us when met by unexpected foes.
To tell a story is to unravel a tapestry. No matter the
ending, no matter the beginning, the tapestry is no longer the same as it was.
The listener takes it and makes it something else. Their mind now holds the
pieces; their mind is now in control of its design. They paint the picture and
they decide its destiny. It now infiltrates their moments…the listener can feed
it, share it, destroy it. Their soul is now pierced by its magic. Even in print
a story is not the same to two people as it might be to the one who wrote it.
That is its beauty that is its horror. That is where the writer sees fear
incarnate. It is in print where we place
our words, share the stories, the pieces of our souls…naively thinking that the
listener/reader will see it exactly as it was intended. Would any of us really
have it any other way? These different perspectives, these different spins are what
we used to get ourselves into this passion to begin with. Inspiration is what
made the tapestry exist, it fueled us when we felt lost, pushed us to create
what we desired and aggravated us when we were unable to explain our
thoughts.
In today’s world where social media makes it so easy for the
listener/reader to breakdown or build up the stories of our soul we must
remember that it is our belief in its greatness that matters. Their version,
their vision, their design of what we share is theirs – but it was spurred by
the ideas, the passions, the love, the hate, the fear, the rebellion of what we
put out there. The writer is doing as he/she should, writing; writing because
their soul is not content to just be pieces that no one knows, to be silent, to
be hidden away. It is yearning to be listened to, to be read, to be shared and
to be recreated into whatever destiny awaits…the tapestry is ever changing, its
colors, its design is not stagnate…it is gloriously being weaved into new
hearts and minds with every comment, every opinion. Continue to write, to
explore those stories because without them what a colorless landscape this
would be…
***
Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more,
talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours.
-Swedish Proverb
