Sharing Tales and Chapters

 

“There are no happy endings… There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories – perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years – and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.”
― Charles de Lint

 

Sharing tales by the fire
and knowing that for awhile
we’ll travel together
Lovers, friends, strangers
exchanging gifts, words, experiences
sharing a bed, an adventure, a lifetime
or several.
We may part one day for awhile
yet in parting we leave the gift
of chapters in each other’s tales
on the unending road ahead.
Blessings, G

 

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Invoking HerInvoking Her by G A Rosenberg

 

Field TheoryField Theory by G A Rosenberg

 

Rewriting Our Story– A Reply

 

“Narrative therapy is sometimes known as involving ‘re-authoring’ or ‘re-storying’ conversations. As these descriptions suggest, stories are central to an understanding of narrative ways of working.
The word ‘story’ has different associations and understandings for different people. For narrative therapists, stories consist of:

  • events
  • linked in sequence
  • across time
  • according to a plot

As humans, we are interpreting beings. We all have daily experiences of events that we seek to make meaningful. The stories we have about our lives are created through linking certain events together in a particular sequence across a time period, and finding a way of explaining or making sense of them. This meaning forms the plot of the story. We give meanings to our experiences constantly as we live our lives. A narrative is like a thread that weaves the events together, forming a story.
We all have many stories about our lives and relationships, occurring simultaneously. For example, we have stories about ourselves, our abilities, our struggles, our competencies, our actions, our desires, our relationships, our work, our interests, our conquests, our achievements, our failures. The way we have developed these stories is determined by how we have linked certain events together in a sequence and by the meaning we have attributed to them.”
–Alice Morgan, What is Narrative Therapy An easy-to-read Introduction

 

I love getting comments on my blog. I do try to respond to each one tho there are times, such as now when I fall way behind. I even like getting challenged from time to time. I received a comment from Kathryn Preston on last night’s blog Reframing the tale that I wanted to share along with my reply:

Do you have a “formula” or a “how to” manual? Can you cite an illustrative example of how to reframe the story? Showing us how to do this would be extremely constructive rather than just stating a platitude. Thanks much.

 

My mission statement for my blog is that it is a showcase for my art and a chance to share what I am thinking about with whomever wishes to read it in 100-300 words a night. I tend to write around quotes that I find and occasionally I try to find quotes to fit what I wish to write about but my aim is to practice and hone my writing skills and to share with my audience whether it be poetry, a humorous list or a short essay. If I write something that can make people self-reflect or laugh or think or even go hmmm then I have surpassed my goals. I enjoy communicating with you folks and from the comments I receive many of you seem to enjoy it as well.
The truth is that many of us have spent years telling ourselves self-defeating stories about our lives. It would be beyond fatuous to believe that I could in a few hundred words say anything that would change that. The most I can hope to do is to plant the seeds and get people asking themselves if they are doing this and yes if they do recognize it in themselves then to look at ways to change this behaviour. If this is seen as a cliche or a platitude than that is ok with me. Perhaps we need to look at how a thought can become so common that it becomes a cliche in the first place.
That being said, recently I have learned of a form of counselling known as Narrative Therapy. Narrative Therapy serves as a way for people to take control of the stories that they tell themselves and to create new stories. For people who wish to learn more about it, I recommend this site: http://dulwichcentre.com.au/what-is-narrative-therapy/ tho there are many others out there.
There are other ways of examining our lives. Many of them seem to involve deconstructing people’s current way of doing things, and then reconstructing new viewpoints. I find the connection between this and the alchemical formula “Solve et Coagula” to be far from coincidental.
If you feel that you are unhappy and your life doesn’t work or could work better, by all means either through meditation and self-reflection, shadow work, various forms of therapy or even a new exercise program take the steps to change it. Because no essayist or artist can do it for you.
Blessings, G

 

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Stopping the WorldStopping the World by G A Rosenberg

 

Neuron TransmissionNeuron Transmission by G A Rosenberg

 

An Oft-Told Tale but Changed

 

“Do stories grow? Pretty obviously — anybody who has ever heard a joke being passed on from one person to another knows that they can grow, they can change. Can stories reproduce? Well, yes. Not spontaneously, obviously — they tend to need people as vectors. We are the media in which they reproduce; we are their petri dishes… Stories grow, sometimes they shrink. And they reproduce — they inspire other stories. And, of course, if they do not change, stories die.”
–Neil Gaiman

 

Did you hear the one about the man who tried?
He failed so many times that he thought he’d die
still reached and found the courage somewhere inside
to go on and attempt it again?

 

Did you hear the one of the heart that cared?
It was so tempting to give into their fear
yet still they had enough will to dare
and so met the man halfway

 

What about the one about the two who loved?
Buried so deep but they reached above
Their passion flared up when push came to shove
but they kept on going?

 

We’ll close on the tale of the love that would last
The story of two who pushed past their past
to burn so brightly and yet way too fast
so they learned to reignite

— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

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LeonineLeonine by G A Rosenberg

 

Spiralling DownwardsThe Downward Spiral by G A Rosenberg

 

Narrow Focus on the Middle of the Tale

 

“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”
— Margaret Atwood

 

Sometimes it feels like life becomes a little too dramatic. Those closest to us act in ways that we find difficult to accept. Our jobs and family life are in turmoil and we can’t tell which way is up. One day it may make a good story but at the time it feels like the deepest torment. Those are the times when it becomes necessary to hold on tight and let it go and realize that I will make it through to tell the tale. I can’t see the story’s end all I can see is the next thing necessary to do. So I do that thing and then the next thing and a few steps down the line I have made it through the storm. That is the way I have made it through before and it will work that way into the future. When the path ahead is fogged up, I will focus on what is ahead of me and make it one step at a time. What a story I will have to tell when I have arrived.
Blessings, G

 

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Vision ScopeVision Scope by G A Rosenberg

 

50-FurcasFurcas (#50 in Goetia Series) by G A Rosenberg

 

The Stories That Give Us Strength

 

“Find the stories that help you comprehend the incomprehensible. Find the stories that make you stronger.”
— Eleanor Davis, How to Be Happy

 

The stories that give me strength are ones that deal with our understanding of ourselves and others. Ones where someone is forced to walk in another person’s footsteps and see what life is like from the inside of their head. In many of the stories and novels I have read where this has happened, it results in a certain alchemy taking place where each person takes on the characteristics of the other that they needed in order to become more successful in their own lives. Part of me has always wanted to reproduce that alchemy with almost everyone I’ve met.
We are all such mysteries to each other. We believe we have true understanding or perspective or at least enough to judge what another should do or where they are right or wrong yet seldom unaided can we truly know what it feels like for them from the inside. The funny thing is it is not all that difficult. If we start with getting to know the person, really listen to them and get a feel for their lives and experiences and how they experience them, we can begin to imagine what it is they are going through. This does not mean that we agree with their choices or would make the same ones but it means we can understand why they made them. We can experience their triumphs and what made them strong and we can know what makes them weep. The more people we can understand in this way, the stronger we become.
Blessings, G

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Transfiguration2Transfiguration by G A Rosenberg

 

Just Stories?

 

“Just stories. You and me, everybody, we’re a set of stories and what those stories are is what makes us what we are.”
“It’s all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are”
— Charles de Lint

 

The stories that we tell ourselves about our lives are amazing. We write ourselves as heroes or victims and then go on living the roles that we have created. If the stories we tell of our lives are unhappy ones than we go on living unhappy lives. If the stories we tell are of fulfilment and joy than that is what we live. What happens tho if we change the story we tell? What if we take the unhappiest chapter of our life and reframe it as a valuable lesson learned that brought us joy? What happens if we take that one thing we always blamed ourselves for and change it so that while we accept the responsibility for our reactions, we accept that we were living according to who we were at the time and it wasn’t our fault.
When it comes right down to it, very little in our lives is our fault. It is our responsibility tho to deal with the consequences, to learn and then move on. This isn’t always easy. But if we change our tale, we can create a new story for ourselves and ultimately a much happier life.
Blessings, G

 

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Three Pillar ExerciseThree Pillar Exercise by G A Rosenberg

 

Buried SeedBuried Seed by G A Rosenberg

 

Intertwined Tales

 

“Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.”
― Salman Rushdie

 

Who can say their story is wholly their own? Whether or not we intend them to our lives touch each others usually in the best ways. We form relationships and intertwine our experiences and our paths out of choice or out of the necessity of learning what the other has to offer. At the beginning of our lives we start out as part of the tale of our parents and from there as our own story unravels we become part of so many others. Without other people how many tales would we have? Would it be an endless soliloquy? Even when alone we are part of the story of the Earth and the humanity upon it. By reading these words I have become part of your tale and you part of mine. May our story be a happy one full of joy and love.
Blessings, G

 

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Portal LiasonPortal Liaison by G A Rosenberg

 

Border CrossingBorder Crossing by G A Rosenberg

 

Serving Stories

 

“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny

 

It’s amazing how a good story can grab us. Especially when the story is our own. We as individuals or as part of a tribe construct our story out of a combination of things that happened and things that were said and things that we wished we had said and done. Over time we refine our story improving it until it is the one that works best for us at the moment whether in getting reactions out of others or in justifying our own action. As time goes on, it is not the events we remember in clarity but the oft repeated words. We may even tell our story long after it has served its purpose even if in the long run it does us harm. If someone who was present at the actual event remembers it differently (after all they have constructed their own narrative, we may become greatly offended. Where in more judicious moments we may see that a greater truth and value may come out of the combination of the stories, all too often we cling to the narrative we have. People can and have gone to war over these conflicting narratives. Families have been broken and lives destroyed merely because of a slight difference in narrative. Does our story still serve us or have we fallen in thrall to the story allowing it to control our reality and how we view ourselves?
I feel it would behoove us to look at our stories especially in cases of conflicting narratives to be sure that they remain useful to us rather than the means by which we perpetuate dysfunction.
Blessings, G

 

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Moth Woman ViewMoth Woman View by G A Rosenberg

 

Welcome3Welcome by G A Rosenberg

 

Textured EmergenceTextured Emergence by G A Rosenberg

 

Withholding the No

 

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”
― Ansel Adams

 

One day when I was walking through a nearby park, I met an old man and we start talking. He talked about his early life in the military and then later on how he traveled by rail and hitchhiked all over the country. I loved his stories. Oh he expressed many views I didn’t agree with. He seemed a bit racist and his view of politics was way different than mine. I didn’t voice my disagreement tho because I wanted to hear more of his stories that so beautifully expressed his life.
It’s my experience that most people don’t take well to being told their views are mistaken, which by many means different than their own. Oh I’m not shy about expressing my particular reality tunnels either here or when asked, I just have never been comfortable negating the views of others. Think of how many stories we would miss out on if we shut someone off just because they offered an opinion, even one we chose to find offensive. Eventually people’s views especially ones we find ignorant will grow and expand given half a chance. Reality has a way of widening most viewpoints these days and seldom if ever have I seen a viewpoint narrowed by what has befallen someone.
I will always listen to people’s stories because sometimes that is the most precious thing they have to share. I have yet to meet anyone whom I couldn’t learn something from and my favourite hobby is curing my own ignorance…
Blessings, G

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High PriestessII – The High Priestess by G A Rosenberg

 

Indigo Star PatternIndigo Star Pattern by G A Rosenberg

Hearing the Tale

 

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
― Eudora Welty

 

We carry our stories in different ways. I saw an old woman in the city yesterday. With her one remaining arm, she wheeled her shopping cart full of dolls down the street speaking to each of them by name..Listening to her for awhile, I realized that each one was a child of hers that had passed from some kind of terrible accident.
A teenage boy walked by. In his sagger and his ongoing dialogue, I could hear the anger that he felt at his parents and his world and his desperate need for someone to pay attention.
Two old men sitting at a chess table, revealed in each move the lives they lived. A woman in business dress looking at her watch and pausing as her eyes glanced at her empty finger where a ring used to fit told stories of an icy practicality that love could not melt. Each person wore their stories, actors caught up in the roles that they played. Except for one man. In his eyes I saw a story of hard won wisdom and a transmission of pure love. I hope some day to also be that story of transcendence.
Blessings, G

 

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Silent Fox in Forest At NightSilent Fox in the Night Forest by G A Rosenberg

 

Emerald ShimmeringEmerald Shimmering by G A Rosenberg