Storytellers - A Review

Hi.

Feeling a bit scattered, so I need to spill my guts in a stream of consciousness. Try and enjoy.

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I follow a generation of storytellers. My prints repeat the steps of my father and the web of family connected linearly through him to me. The prints are ingrained, but lately are dusted with beach sand. Long retread, but not ever washed away by wind or tide, only altered by another’s footsteps pushing on the loose thread of memory, changing the narrative. It is incidental, but not always an accident.

It’s fine. Because it’s frustrating to imagine a world without change, but allowing others to change your world, or changing it on your own, only leads to a path untrackable. You cannot repeat steps you do not recognize when you turn to recollect.

And I’ve turned to recollect. I’ve turned to see what the tide might soon erase, and I do not recognize what I see. Instead of my memories, I see days that I left unfinished, ideas turned over, and paths retread. And when I turn back, I see my own steps ahead of me. My own footsteps paralleling the same ocean as ever.

Then I know that I am surrounded. Lost inside of a looping cycle.  

I need to escape, so I consider fording laterally. There, one cannot witness the steps they might retread. But I always have feared a lack of perspective. I fear losing my one true star. I fear losing.

I’ve never been much for competing with anyone but myself, but I find that my self is only capable of great change at times.

Like the pulling of the tide, the range of my development ebbs and flows with the waxing of an uncaring moon.

Now, deep in the trench of my own emotions, I’m telling stories to myself as I float on my back until the tides take me. So, I lay back, watching sunrise to sunset, then watching the stars list.

But by floating, I now leave no footprints. I have no path to follow. I only have what I see.

Out in the water, deep in the student’s cave, my life defined by the limited sky, I decide to flip forward. To lower my legs and sink my chest into the water. I wade, arms out, and follow those stars that I’ve convinced myself I studied. I don’t know which one is brightest, or North, or what they stand for. But I’ve seen the way they move, they have mirrored my movements. And now, in memory, I see the reverse of my path.

I can move on my own. And now I see a way, forward or backward. But now I have to consider, which do I paddle toward.

And see, a decision can feel like a stone at times. One deep in your throat, pulling you down. Deeper and deeper. Until you drown among whatever the depths might hide.

But sometimes, the weight of choice can be freeing. It can release you from what keeps you inhibited.

“Shrug off the stone,” I tell myself. “Let’s try something new.” And I begin to swim.

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Welp. Who knew it’d go there.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great rest of your week.