Topic: Stories

[nichi]

A disciple once complained, "You tell us stories, but you never reveal their meaning to us."

The master replied, "How would you like it if someone offered you fruit and then
chewed it up for you before giving it to you?"

~Author Unknown
(probably demello)

[daphne]

Excellent!!   

[Jennifer-]

A disciple once complained, "You tell us stories, but you never reveal their meaning to us."

The master replied, "How would you like it if someone offered you fruit and then
chewed it up for you before giving it to you?"

~Author Unknown
(probably demello)

 

[Michael]

i rest my case

[Nichi]

The difference between mad people and sane people . . . is that sane people have variety when they talk-story. Mad people have only one story that they talk over and over.


~Maxine Hong Kingston~

[Nichi]

      The Master gave his teaching in parables and stories, which his disciples listened to with pleasure -- and occasional frustration, for they longed for something deeper.

      The Master was unmoved.  To all their objections he would say, "You have yet to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story."

      Another time he said, "Do not despise the story.  A lost gold coin is found by means of a penny candle; the deepest truth is found by means of a simple story."


      Anthony de Mello, S.J.

[Nichi]

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

– Jose Ortega Y Gasset

[Nichi]

DESCENT OF SPIRIT

Descend, prophetic Spirit! that inspir'st
The human Soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come; and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts
Of mighty Poets: upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight; that my Song
With starlike virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence, and secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect
Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere! - And if with this
I mix more lowly matter; with the thing
Contemplated, describe the Mind and Man
Contemplating; and who, and what he was -
The transitory Being that beheld
The Vision; when and where, and how he lived -
Be not this labour useless. If such theme
May sort with highest objects, then - dread Power!
Whose gracious favour is the primal source
Of all illumination - may my Life
Express the image of a better time,
More wise desires, and simpler manners - nurse
My Heart in genuine freedom - all pure thoughts
Be with me - so shall thy unfailing love
Guide, and support, and cheer me to the end!

     WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[Nichi]

Clara began to place some of the rocks I had carried up from the stream. "It is the grace with which you manipulate things that matters," Clara reminded me as she picked up another rock. "Your inner state is reflected in the way you move, talk, eat, or place rocks. It doesn¹t matter what you do, as long as you gather energy with your actions and transform it into power.  As an artist you should know that the rocks have to be put where they are in balance," she said, "not where it is the easiest for you to drop them. Of course, if you were imbued with power, you could drop them any which way and the result would be beauty itself. To understand this is the real purpose of the exercise of placing rocks." 

Taisha Abelar
THE SORCERERS' CROSSING

[Nichi]

Should you care to write (and only the saints know why you should) you must have knowledge and art and music -- the knowledge of the music of words, the art of being artless, and the magic of loving your readers.

Sand and Foam
Kahlil Gibran

[Nichi]

Story-Water

A story is like the water
you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself
like a salamander or Abraham.
We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread
to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that's blazing
inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what's hidden.

Study them,
and enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.

-- Poetic version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995

[Nichi]

Attics

The creaky attics vainly call
Down branches to the basement halls,
Do you think I to you will fall
Some morning? They think time is all,
Enclosed and huddled in recall
(Of dreams and starry chance's draw.)

There is a time when whistles fade
And far-wrung wires wile away --
In night's lost stillness stripped of day,
The foghorn blows and smokestacks bay ---
While people in white houses sweep
Their vigilance to silent sleep.
A whispering clock ticks for its keep ...
The loving lie, and strangers seep
Into a blurry background's wall ---
To mingle there in stories' all ...

VLambert

[Nichi]

Constantly Risking Absurdity

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Nichi]

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house. It's as though I could fly, almost, and I get very tense before I've told the truth--hard. Then I sit down at the desk and get going with it.

~~Anne Sexton~~

[Nichi]

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

~~Charlotte Bronte~~