When there is a story on the tip of my tongue, it feels like champagne bubbles and tastes like honey. It’s the sparkle of sunlight on water and the warmth of golden sand under your bare feet. It’s the bright pink of a basket, woven in a faraway land. It’s the wishes that sit in that basket, wanting to be spoken aloud. It’s the waft of a scent that –just for a moment – transports you to a different time and place.
That’s the magic of story, you see. It will take you places that you never thought you would go, and ask you questions that you never thought you could ask. Story gives us the chance to play with our memories or try out new things: to dance on the deck of a ship in the moonlight, or to stumble through a dark wood, pursued by… what?
Who was with you on the deck of the ship? What was in the woods with you on a dark and stormy night?
You see, you are the key to the story. We are made up of story. We tell stories about who we are and what we want and why we can or cannot have those things. We tell stories about our loves and our laughter and our losses and our delights. We tell stories to fill the gaps in conversation and to understand the parts of ourselves that we haven’t quite gotten on a first-name basis with yet. Stories delight us, help us, distract us, and fill the spaces between our cells.
That’s what I really think stories are – the spells that hold us together. When Carl Sagan said, “We are made of Star Stuff,” for the first time many of us finally understood who we were in the universe.
Now I would like to add a little something: I believe that we are actually made of star stuff and stories.
So when I tell you that I have a story on the tip of my tongue, what I am actually saying is that – just for a moment – I was on the brink of something wonderful. The moment before a story settles feels like an eternity. Will it choose me? Is it time? Will the words come? Then there’s the moment when the story decides to stay – when it settles in and sinks into the spaces between my cells – and I get just a glimpse of swirling tents, and smoky campfires, and castle keeps, and humble hearths, and talking birds, and a pocket full of wonders, and a woman – there’s always a woman – who has something important that she wants to whisper in my ear…
“Let me tell you a story…”
There is a story on the tip of my tongue. It’s a story about how magical you are.
It’s not alone. For the past few months I have been collecting stories in my big red book; stories about magic and bridges and smells and tastes; stories about wonder and enchantment and questions, and above all, stories about the Mysteriousness and Magic of being alive and on this grand adventure of being here, now.
Would you like to hear some of them? Would you like to come along on this adventure? Stories, after all, only become magical when we become a part of them.
Come closer. Join me. Let me spin you a tale. It’s about a woman who is made up of star stuff and stories….
My new course, Seven Stories, is now open for registration. I hope you will join me.
I do admit that in the past I have been tempted by the wonder. I have seen articles about the glorious effects of drinking collagen and then gone to Amazon to see how much those little pots of goodness (it turns out they are made of whizzed up cows) were and then laughed at myself and wondered about the state of the world. I have stood in a bookstore and fondled the pages of a cookbook full of recipes for powders and sauces that all appear to have mystical powers, if you have the time and the life energy and the money to spend on all of that.
So slowly we began making small changes. When we could afford it, we’d choose organic fruits and vegetables. When something had too many ingredients to pronounce, we put it back on the shelf. We chose to make a few more things from scratch. We stopped eating things with ingredients that we knew were poison (MSG and high-fructose corn syrup were the first to go), and began to choose differently whenever we could.
