Storytelling Piece

Continuous present is one thing and beginning again and again is another thing. These are both things. And then there is using everything.

This brings us again to composition--the using everything [in storytelling].

The using everything brings us to composition, and to this composition. A continuous present and using everything and beginning again. There is an elaborate complexity of using everything, and of a continuous present and of beginning again and again and again.

What is your favorite story? What it makes great? 

Return Story

“Why would you go back?” asked my Austro-Hungarian-born grandmother in 1994, when I announced I would be spending the summer in the former Czechoslovakia. She had never looked behind her after fleeing Bratislava in 1940, first to Italy, then traveling across continents to Sydney, then Los Angeles, where I was born.

“We knew you would come back,” said my wife’s grandfather as Zuzana and I prepared for our 2001 chuppah in Košice, Slovakia, her hometown. He had always looked forward; a Jewish surgeon under state socialism, he had moved his family from Prešov to Bardejov to Košice, no one city more than 80 km from another.

“Why would you want to come back?” asked the ministry official as I reclaimed my Slovak citizenship, in the name of my forebears whom the wartime Slovak state had disenfranchised, dispossessed, and deported. By right, I replied, and the only restitution that mattered to me: the acknowledgment that my multinational, multilingual family had always belonged here, and that this new Slovak Republic was the heir not to fascist chaos but to cosmopolitan “civitas.”

The guns of August, first sounded 100 years ago this summer, resonate across the generations. Empires disaggregated, nation-states pronounced and divorced. To the different roots of our children’s family tree, the changing seasons brought wealth and poverty, death and life, love and loss. There were those who migrated and those who remained. We, their descendants, have recovered, rediscovered…returned.

Of course there is no undoing the past century. But for our family—for me—I am not so sure that there is no going back. The United States, unquestionably, is my home. But today we also are at home in Slovakia. The art of return? It is dance—a round—always in motion, ever unbroken.
 

What are the things in your life that you would like to return to?

[From Jewels of Elul: jewelsofelul.com]

Renewal Story

The subway the freeway the airwaves stop. The traffic the deadlines the newspaper stop. The shopping the carpool the homework stop. The iPhone the iPad the Internet stop. The politics restaurant food stamps homeless man garbage can God plan stop. The drones and the clones and the suicide belts. The attacks and the cracks in the facts and the holy arcade by the black street parade and another kid down she’s been kicked by the trade. Ones and zeros piled high as the sky and the nighttime cries while the dreamer’s awake he can’t shake the mistakes of the dizzying day.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Catch a breath. Take a sip of cool air. Sit on the ground on a rock on a bed on a chair.

Light a candle. Take a walk. Under trees. Holding hands. Bare feet.

Breathe deep.

Close the eyes. Go inside. As the belly expands then the weight of demands have a chance to release.

Breathe deep.

Give it time to unwind. The cells need fresh air to repair.

The mind quiets. The candle burns. The time slows down. The breath is here. Always. To remind. The closest friend in the world, the breath. As the world speeds on. I breathe into rest.    
 

How do you renew and how can you do more of it?

Expectations Story

Commuting from New Jersey to New York, I’ve learned to stick to myself—to sit or stand in a tight space, with many other people around, and pretend they are not there. Sometimes I am content with this sense of individualism and independence, and other times I crave to engage.

I stumbled upon an invitation for interaction in the 42nd Street subway station. I noticed a man giving away free balloon animals, a colorful tiled mural, and then a table set up with posters reading “Free Henna”, “Free Quran”, and “Muslims Giving Back”. My eyes scanned a large banner with the word “Racism” crossed out.

Three Muslim women, wearing hijabs and full veils, were at the henna and Qaran table, dispelling negative stereotypes through simple, human interactions. I waited in the short line and then spent the next twenty-five minutes chatting with strangers, unexpectedly connecting with people from a different culture from my own.

I found myself wondering why avoiding connection is so easy to do in such a diverse, full city. In an effort to change this pattern, I placed my hand on the older woman’s knee as she drew a beautiful, brown design gently across my skin. It spanned from my left wrist to my fingernails—a flower, paisley, and little dots and lines.

How can you connect more with individuals and communities different from your own?

Beginnings Story

The plan was to be down on one knee. She and I were at the exact spot in the park where we'd met three years before. My brother was hiding in the bushes with a telephoto lens. I’d spent months searching for the right ring. A diamond, but not a bloody one. She wanted this engagement and wasn’t shy about saying so. I was less sure. Not because I didn’t love her or want to spend our lives together. But because of the overwhelming uncertainty. The divorce rate isn't actually 50 percent, it's more like 30, but that’s still a whole lot of visits to Splitsville. And there is no reason to think we wouldn’t one day book tickets there ourselves. Yet the part of me that doesn’t care about logic knew it was time, uncertainty be damned. Because really, in this life, there is nothing to do but try. I dropped down, lifted the ring, and asked my baby to become my bride. She said yes. The rest is a blur. Luckily my brother did his job. But in the photos I’m not down on one knee. I’m down on both knees. Grounded, in the face of uncertainty.
 

When you’re starting something new, how do you balance excitement and uncertainty?

The New Year Story

Everybody put your best suit or dress on

Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once

Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn

As thirty dialogues bleed into one.
 

I wish the world was flat like the old days

Then I could travel just by folding a map

No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways

There'd be no distance that can hold us back.

What do you want to discover in 2017?
 

Happy New Year!

Light Story

As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
 

What’s one thing you can do to help someone in need this holiday season?

Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light, begins at sunset this Saturday and lasts for eight nights.

Strength Story

I took a breath.
Realized I wasn’t twelve.
Realized I wasn’t ruled by those demons from my past.
Realized I was a grown-up.
Realized it didn’t matter if they knew I was different.
Hell, I was different.
I took off my hat.
My hair spilled down onto my shoulders like Samson.
I got my strength back.
I knocked down the walls of my past with my bare hands.
I became a man.

How can you boost your inner strength?

Here-and-Now Story

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
 

What is one thing you can do this week to live a more engaged life?

Facing Fears Story

There are only three things in this world that I’m truly afraid of: sharks, dolls that come to life in the middle of the night, and dying alone.

The first two I blame on a childhood spent consuming American media. I was four when Jaws came out. For some incomprehensible reason, my parents had a copy of the “literary adaptation” with a cover that matched the movie poster. I would sneak up to their bookshelf and peek at the image, then run to my room to hide from it.

Then there was Poltergeist. This movie ruined clown dolls for me forever (Not that they’d ever held much appeal in the first place. But still.).

My third fear came to life much later. And it crashes over me like a rogue wave every time I visit my grandmother in her nursing home. She’s one of the lucky ones in the facility; my mother lives close and visits her regularly. But my grandmother’s neighbors? I often see them alone in their separate rooms, nodding in and out of consciousness, TVs blaring, with photos of family members taped to their doors. I try to make eye contact with each person I pass, say hello, and smile. Is that all there is?

This thought terrifies me more than all the sharks in the ocean and all the evil dolls in my closet.

How can you confront what you fear?