“Among the brigands who’d killed the messenger and taken me with them, dragging me headlong from mountain to mountain and city to city, there was a thief who occasionally understood my worth, and had the refinement to realize that looking at the drawing of a tree is more pleasant than looking at a tree; but because he didn’t know to which story I belonged, he quickly tired of me.”*

…I must interrupt this in order to thank my upstairs neighbors (presently embroiled in another loud family argument). Between their off-key singing, fights and reconciliations, they provide just the right dosage of daily aggravation to qualify as my vaccine against losing every last bit of forbearance over the really huge woes out there. (Yes, friends help too, but there’s nothing like an annoying neighbor for a reminder that You Are Not Alone.)

Where was I? Ah yes. Stories, interruptions and suspense. Instead of a quote from Pamuk, I could have used this from Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf: ‘Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what’s said and what’s done.’** Which applies full well to life and to story, both.

I could have pulled out almost any book on my shelves for the purpose of this note. Stories – shelters and testimonials both, retrieved from the storm. Leaky shelters, uncomfortable often, tremendously funny or sad, puzzling, daunting, scary, horrific, tender. The whole catastrophe told and retold through the ages as it unfolds and redeploys.

Time to listen. Time to read. Time to write. Time to act.

Stories.

***

*I Am A Tree, in Orhan Pamuk My Name is Red, translated from theTurkish by Erdag M. Göknar, Vintage Books, New York, 2002

** Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, Faber and Faber, 2000