there are stories I love to tell--stories I have perfected the telling of. stories which, given a willing audience, I could tell over and over again. most of these stories are all about me.
me. about me. what do those stories say about me?
I'm thinking about all the texture of my life. all the patterned and patternless history I've collected so far. telling stories is one way to remember it. and on the other hand... telling and retelling and re-remembering these stories is one way to completely revise the past. after a few months or years, it becomes easy to bend the details. to emphasize the funny parts. to leave out the things that make you look like a bit of an idiot.
how I envision myself is pretty complicated, I guess. perspective is weirdly limited like that, anyway.
I keep thinking about this post from August of 2006. I don't remember who that woman was, what our appointment was for, and why it seemed to matter how I reacted to her being late. maybe I invented her as an illustration to accompany my 'to thine own self be true' ramblings. who can say? either way, in my brief anecdote she is hardly represented the way she might like to be, had she any choice in the matter.
in all the other stories I love to tell about myself and my experiences, there are background characters. there are the neighbors and friends and co-workers and relatives and strangers, and they are all at least semi-important to the stories, and most of them are real people. the stories aren't real. even if they're true, they can't capture exactly how deep and vivid reality really is. after all--in reality, all of those background characters have their own versions of the stories I tell, and on top of those, hundreds of stories in which I fail to appear. not every story needs me in it. people would get sick of me.
who chooses which stories are worth telling? and what makes those favorite stories of mine so wonderful to tell? it's not only the way I tell them, I don't think. maybe it's just the feelings attached. or maybe I just like the way I picture myself in them, or the perspective I can give those past events from where I sit now. if I could remember every moment with the same narrative clarity, would I still pick the same stories to tell over and over again? why is it that some memories have turned into well-molded and carefully told stories and others have evaporated into shadowy, shapeless clouds? why has it been so easy to hold on to some things, and so impossible to keep others from slipping away into the dark?
this post was going to be about making allowances. I'd been pondering friendship, and all the give-and-take that piles up around really meaningful relationships, and the lines we draw in our heads between the things we are going to accept in silence and the things we are going to say something about--good or bad or random or whatever. but... well, I don't think I can explain why my blogposts never turn out quite like I think they will. it's a mystery.
2 comments:
Well Amelia, I find that it is difficult for me to remember past experiences, I have trouble placing myself back within my memories, so consequently it seems that the only experiences I remember well are from the stories I've told to others. I suppose that makes me somewhat detached from reality, maybe it's a chemical imbalance in the brain or something, who knows?
I think the reasons that people enjoy telling stories is for the attention they get from others. Who doesn't want some positive reenforcement now and then? We can't all be the center of attention all the time, so we have to get creative to be noticed.
I believe that the things we remember most are the things that are most important to us. Some experiences have strong emotions connected with them so we remember them more vividly, whether we want to or not.
And yes, perhaps in telling your stories you have villianized some poor soul who you don't really know, but it's not like you'll ever recognize them if you ran into them on the street, and besides, what are stories without antagonists?
I've decided I like blogs a lot more than Facebook. It limits the expression of more complex ideas and is ultimately a shallow experience, though it is better than Twitter...
heh. you make a good point about antagonists. stories need them. and I suppose, given the 'opposition in all things' concept, real life needs them too...
but hopefully nobody out there is using that as an excuse to be a villain. hm.
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