Sallyacious

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September 03, 2007

How Did She Know?

I was going to post an entry here titled "Getting Myself Back" about how I seem to have rediscovered my voice over the past few weeks and how wonderful it is to be hanging out with Sally again. The woman I used to be, the one I thought I'd never see again, seems to be reemerging and I'm rediscovering the joy of being alive.

And then I did this assignment...

For one of the classes I co-teach, my partner and I have been working on helping our students get into the creative zone. We're trying to help them short-circuit the inner critic long enough to play in the deeply creative space we all possess. Last week we made them watch Spirited Away, which is an astonishing film by a man who swims in the creative ocean when he works. Seriously. He just leaps in and splashes around and it's amazing what stuff comes up.

We wanted our students to have a chance to play in that way too. Even if it's just splashing around in the shallows. So we created this assignment where they each got an image inside a sealed envelope. They weren't allowed to open the envelope until they had some time to focus on this project. When they were ready, they opened the envelope and studied the image and then wrote the story that came into their heads. That's what they've been assigned to do this weekend. It will be interesting to see what they bring to class. Especially since there are no identical images in the bunch. They're all different. Oh. And one other thing. No editing allowed. The job is to just write.

My partner and I love doing this kind of thing, so we actually made envelopes for each other. I did my writing this morning. Here was my image:

(I couldn't find any identifiers, but I'm guessing it comes from The Economist or Harpers or The New Yorker, based on the paper and what's on the back.)

And here's my story:

Yes

A still, small voice, crying out in the nothingness, the whirling swirling nothingness made up of howls of sound.

He’d been traveling for so long, lost in the wilderness of pain and agonized voices, trying to test his voice, to be heard.

He knew he had a voice once, knew there had been a time and a place when the peace and stillness without echoed and matched the stillness within and when he spoke, he heard himself. He knew he was speaking not only because he heard his own voice, but because others heard it too. Others responded with smiles, tears, sighs, laughs of recognition. There was an impact, he made an impact. His voice was heard.

But here, in this aching place of need, where no one was fed as they needed, no one heard his voice. So many other voices were screaming calling yowling to be heard that no one was. No one had a voice because no one was listening. No one could hear.

He had been crawling through this desert place, with no food, no water, for weeks months years. Searching for the stillness, searching for peace, quiet, a resting place. At times he’d thought he’d found it, only to discover that some one else’s need, seemingly bigger, greater, more urgent had filled the void instead. And so he would crawl out of the haven and stagger on.

Sometimes he banded with other people, hoping for the security of the group. Hoping that with so many other searchers, he might find one with a set of working ears, one heart that would hear and accept his spoken truth. But no one did. The voices responding back to him were only full of their own pain, their own need, mixing his truth with their hopes and dreams and fears and giving him back nothing at all resembling the words he had uttered.

He even picked up their burdens for them, carrying the weight of their pain and grief. Surely, if he did so much for someone else, someone would recognize his need as well and do the same for him. The weight of the bundles made him stagger, and soon he noticed that their owners paid no more attention to him once he had taken on their baggage along with his own.

He began to doubt himself.

If so many voices told him his truth was wrong, incorrect, shallow, self-deceiving, how could they all be wrong? If everyone around him told him he was mistaken in his truth, that what he believed to be the sound of his own voice was filtered by his headbones, his flesh, his own pain and need, that the things they told him they heard were actually his truth, if everyone told him that, how could they all be wrong? How could the voice of numbers lie?

But a person is not a democracy. A human being is, by virtue of need, an oligarchy. A society ruled by one. Multitudes may clamor, but ultimately the decisions must be made by a single voice, a single ruler. All the wailing, clamoring, tooth-gnashing of others cannot alter that fact that a person, in the end, is responsible for his own soul, and that he must see to its health and well-being. He knows how to do that, instinctively; if he listens, carefully, he can hear its voice telling him how it needs to live.

It is impossible, some days, to find a place quiet enough to hear the soul’s whisper. Impossible especially in a world of shrieking need. And yet, sometimes, when the wind is right, everything goes quiet for a moment. And the soul’s truth makes itself heard.

So it was with our hero. One blistering afternoon, overburdened with the weight of the world’s cares, he sought refuge for a moment in the shade of a rock. It was cool there, a world of muted colors. The grey of the rock and the darker brown of the damp sand, still wet from earlier rains in a place where the sun’s rays couldn’t touch.

He leaned against the rock. Felt the coolness of its surface against his cheek. The roughness and the hardness of its substance brushed his face. For a moment’s respite, he focused on that and only that, of rock and what it meant, how it felt, to be there in that moment only himself and rock.

A breeze tickled his other cheek.

His eyes opened in wonder as he realized that the voices were quieter. Still there, still shouting, but somehow muted by the presence of the rock. He could almost hear himself breathing, it was so much more still there.

In front of him, within his reach, the man saw a stick. Without thinking, just acting, he grasped it. In doing so, he left a mark in the damp sand. The volume of the voices dropped further. And then he knew. Again without thinking (much), he began to write.

I am. He wrote.

I do.

I feel.

I think.

I AM.

And with each mark he made in the sand, the man noticed the clamor of the voices dropping. Never going away, but moving out from inside his head. He kicked the burdens he’d been carrying aside. The packages and bundles and bags he’d picked up for others. They were in his way. He needed more room to write. And they weren’t his baggage. The owners would be along for them soon enough.

Eventually, he ran out of damp sand, and the marks of his stick were swallowed by the dry grains as they slid and tumbled over each other in the wind.

But he knew that there would be other places to write. That there would be other opportunities to speak his truth. And so, putting the stick carefully into the pocket next to his heart, the man stood up, refreshed, and resumed walking.

*****

See why I'm wondering how she knew?

Posted by sally at September 3, 2007 12:41 PM

Comments

Posted by: glasbeth at September 4, 2007 10:25 AM

Posted by: Sallyacious at September 4, 2007 07:20 PM

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