The Stories We Tell to Survive

Twice this month I had the flu. Twice I was forced to stop doing, stop moving, stop being out in the world. I had to pause. Breathe. Rest. Observe.

As I’ve been observing, five different pieces of writing have been spinning through my mind. I’m watching what’s happening, my heart is breaking, my mind is breaking. I am grasping for words. I am grasping at straws.

The only thing I know how to do is write.

So I’m weaving together a tapestry of words. These are the source texts of my life. These words are the scaffolding of my spine and the network of my heart. These words are the echo chamber I live in and the path I walk down.

And they begin with a promise.

One, a Promise:

I was raised on Reading Rainbow. Bookworm, book lover that I am, it is no surprise to anyone that the Reading Rainbow was my favorite show. The introductory theme swept me away just as much as the books in the show. Even as an adult, hearing this song sweeps me away. The lyrics in it are profound. I can go twice as high. I can become. I can reach. I can grow.

Just today, talking to my cousin, we shared what classes we are currently taking. Neither he nor I are in school, trying to earn diplomas, or certifications. We both just love to learn. I never want to stop learning. I never want to stop trying to do better. I never want to stop opening books.

Reading Rainbow is the promise that books and stories are exactly what we need. Always.

“Butterfly in the sky
I can go twice as high
Take a look
It's in a book
A reading rainbow

I can go anywhere
Friends to know
And ways to grow
A reading rainbow

I can be anything
Take a look
It's in a book
A reading rainbow (A reading rainbow)
A reading rainbow (A reading rainbow, a reading rainbow)”

Two, Hope:

The promise of books and stories has led me into my job as a writer. Namely, I hope I am doing something. I hope my words are doing something. I do not take this job lightly. I am trying to understand what is my role as a writer and storyteller. The West Wing is something like a grown up version of Reading Rainbow. The show was seeking as much to educate as entertain. It inspired many into government service for the sake of making things better, not for the sake of grabbing power. I’ve watched the show many times over, and I listen carefully to the language. I am hopeful that I am stumbling into truth. that I am holding your attention.

The West Wing - the fictional character Tabitha Fortis U.S. Poet Laureate says, “An artist's job is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky. And I don't get to decide what truth is.”

Three, Battle:

But adulthood comes for us all and demands of us conformity. When the masses are obedient, they are easier to oppress. In the face of that, searching for truth in the machinery of capitalism is a day in day out war. The machinery takes you from birth, to school, to marriage, to work if you are a man and motherhood if you are a woman, to retirement, to death. Deviations from that path are punished harshly. And that is the lucky path. That path is if you are on the white cis-het normative pipeline. Not another, say the school to prison pipeline determined by skin color. The stakes are high. The punishments steep. Nonetheless, we speak up. We say no in a meeting instead of nodding along with everyone else. We press post even if it will cost us followers (or no one reads in the first place). We step in when we see wrongdoing because the cost of silence is our humanity.

“To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” - e.e. cummings

Four, Love

This is my why. My battle is fueled by love. When I am trying to find my direction. When I am trying to figure out what I am doing. When I am trying to figure out how to help. When I am trying to figure out who to be. What to say. I hear Catalina’s words in my ears. ‘We must love everything first.’ For all of its flaws and brokenness, I love this world, this country, and everything in it first.

Catalina is writing about living with anxiety. But her words speak to much more than living with anxiety. Her words speak to every single one of us. When we call our Senators. When we march. When we record. When we post. When we call a friend and ask how are you? When we offer a hand to someone who was knocked over. When we ask ‘are you okay’? We love everything first. It is the reason for everything.

An excerpt from the poem “Anxiety Group” by Catalina Ferro:

“These people who fight through every day
Like fucking gladiators,
Who fight demons worse than you and I could dream of,
Just because they want so badly to live
To hold on
To love
Because you can’t be this afraid of losing everything
If you don’t love everything first
Because you have to have
a soul-crushing hope
That things will get better
To be this afraid of missing it.”

Five, a Plea:

You might not have heard of Scheherazade, but you probably have heard of a Thousand and One Nights. Scheherazade is the narrator of A Thousand and One Nights. As the story goes, there once was a King or a Shah. He was betrayed by his wife. She was unfaithful. So, of course, he had her beheaded. He then proceeded to marry a new woman every night and have her beheaded the next morning. Until Scheherazade. She volunteered herself to marry the King. Her family mourned before the marriage ceremony even began. But she was not beheaded. On their wedding night she began to tell the King a story promising only to finish it the next night. And so continued one thousand and one nights. She stayed alive through the power of her storytelling.

I had never heard of Scheherazade until I picked up Jillian Lauren’s memoir who tells Scheherazade’s story in the prologue.

“This is, of course, the story of Scheherazade. It’s the story of the storyteller. We lay our heads on the block and hope that you’ll spare us, that you’ll want another tale, that you’ll love us in the end. We’re looking for the story that will save our lives.
One thousand and one nights -nearly three years. That’s about the span of this story. Will you listen? It’s almost morning.” - Jillian Lauren

And this is how I feel right now in this moment in the world. All the social media. All the news media. All the camera angles. All the captures of every incident. Everyone filming. All of the trained observers with their phones capturing from multiple angles. Everyone commenting. Everyone editorializing. Everyone using words to shake the world awake.

It is dawn and we are all Scheherazade trying to find the right story that will captivate the King and spare our necks.