Story

This is a piece I wrote for the creativity workshop I'm taking through reimagine. I'm having trouble with the idea of story right now, especially the idea of my story, which I guess becomes a story in itself.

She sat on a bench in the Shakespeare garden thinking how much more Shakespearean it would be if there were quotes from the plays in front of each of the plants. She thought she remembered there being little plaques serving exactly this purpose the last time she was there, but that was all of ten years ago. Perhaps she was remembering a different garden, or perhaps she was only remembering that she had wanted there to be quotes in the garden back then as well. It was not hard to believe that her mind might go back to the same thought, recalling it as fact rather than desire. After all, her feet had brought her back to the place where that thought originated.

She did find it hard to believe that it had actually been ten years since she last sat in this place. She was surprised she remembered the garden at all – she hadn’t even realized she remembered it until she saw the sign on the gate – and surprised at how much and how little had changed. But she often felt just this way when her path happened to circle back on places from her past, although her life was such that it should not have been so unexpected.

The journey had started some two dozen plus years before, not two miles from where she sat on that bench, shaded half by an aging tree and half by her own mood. Born to parents who made their lives a loud exercise in contradiction, and possessing what many would call a good nature but what was mostly just eagerness, she followed them in body and heart from one end of the world to the other and back again several times over. There was such eternal import to all the moving about, and so, though the motion sickness always plagued her, she learned at least to appreciate the variety in scenery. She even fancied that she would one day sign up for the great venture on her own terms. No other life seemed to make much sense.

And then, in the most unlikely places, the girl whose wide experience had left her strangely narrow was exposed to the terrific and terrifying grace of reality. In the dreaded bastion of humanism she embraced spirituality never modeled by the self-proclaiming devotees. And in the seeming little-mindedness of the backwoods her capacity for liberality grew beyond the limits of urbane and learned freedoms.

Now if this all sounds too esoteric, know that it was no less cryptic to the girl herself. In fact, sitting there on the now fully shaded bench, growing cold as the sun began to set, she felt distinctly puzzled at the lack of coherence. Her story seemed to be unraveling, the motifs she traced so faithfully up to this point now dispersing, even disappearing. There were still some things she knew she knew – that life is real and so is joy, that knowing things is not as important as it used to be, and that in losing the certainty of outside themes she hoped to find the clarity in her own voice. She knew this, and more importantly, she felt it. Although part of her still wanted the Shakespeare garden to have labels.

A lot about livin'

So for those of you who haven't caught the Alan Jackson allusions yet, and for the many more of you who don't know who Alan Jackson is, let me elucidate: both the title and the url of this blog were inspired by the song "Chattahoochee". I heard it on the radio the other day while driving home from work -- yes I listen to country music -- and realized as I sang along with the chorus just how fit a description of my own time "way down yonder" it is. I've heard the song a thousand times before and never gave it a second thought. But this time, well, it just struck me. And it made me want to write. Check out the lyrics or the fabulous early 90's video if you'd like, although know that I will not justify my choice to draw deep personal meaning from such a source. If you don't get it, I can't explain. It's just part of everything I learned on the banks of the 'Hooch, part of what the muddy water means.