Stories and Circles
‘We dance around in a ring and suppose…
The secret sits in the middle and knows.’
- Robert Frost - (I first saw this line via Alan Stewart in 2005)
"Stories move in circles.
They don’t move in straight lines.
So it helps if you listen in circles.
There are stories insidestories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home.
And part of the finding is the getting lost.
And when you’re lost, you start to look around and to listen."
- Corer Fischer, Albert Greenberg, and Naomi Newman of A Traveling Jewish Theatre, Coming from a Great Distance, cited via Deena Metzgar
And although not a circle helpful when you are going around in them:
"If you don’t know where you are going, you’re never lost"
- spoken by a dear friend and leader, Joep deJong.
To this I also add one of my own evolving definitions of Story: "Story is a framework that holds something that can’t be seen".. and the fact that while lived, a story is very circular and tangental and messy - it is with hindsight it is a straight line. Circles and lines, circles and lines…both at the same time…ie hindsight is a straight narrative, life is a messy circutuous narrative. (me)
Image source - not clear who it is by (possibly it is called ‘La Rave’ by Picasso - with thanks to Peter William Eaves of New Scientist Living Dead Crab story fame and also Avi it is Henri Matisse’s "Dancers")
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June 14th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
This reminds me that we all need a context for our stories. Somewhere to tell them, someone to listen and someone to help us understand.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:23 am
barrie - thank you! something below resonates and relates strongly to what you wrote…in meantime looking forward to working together again soon
A quote from Friday’s email:
“The word for Story in Hebrew, “sippur” is more than just “story.” It means “sefirah”, to count, “sapir”, to illuminate (like the sapphire stone). Kabbalists will tell you that “sefirah refers to the cosmic forces at work. The “Sefer Yetzirah”, the /Book of Formation/ begins: With three seforim,
with three books did G-d create the universe: “b’sefer”, “b’sofer”
“ub’sippur”.
With a book, a scribe and a story.
So a story is more than a story. It captures the tear and the twinkle of Jews throughout history. It manifests the highest and lowest points, and everything in between, it reflects not only the dramatic moments but also the seemingly insignificant ones – life in all its nuances, hues and
colors.”
via Simon Jacobson ‘Telling the Story’ http://www.meaningfullife.com