Unraveling a Tapestry....

 “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…

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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