TheBanyanTree: A story for today

[Pam Lawley]

wow.  your non-story puts any story of mine to shame.

and nobody is surprised.

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>wrote:

> Here's a story!
>
> No, I lied. There is no story. I am storyless, bereft and without stories.
> There are stories, but they're in my head (or haid, whichever you prefer),
> and I might want to keep them there for a rainy day.
>
> Wait. Today's a rainy day.
>
> But then we have the issue of getting them out of my head and onto paper,
> though I rarely use paper these days. I consider using paper from time to
> time, and then it occurs to me that I'd then have to decipher said paper,
> and given the flurrious nature of my handwriting when trying to get
> thousands of words out all at once, that can be a challenge.
>
> I just made up a new word. Add it to your dictionary please. It may make a
> reappearance.
>
> Or it may not. It must be reviewed by the Department of New Words, which is
> not currently in session, but may return next week. Or not.
>
> See, the Department of New Words has been out for recess for months now,
> and the members of said department have been difficult to locate. Some of
> them gone underground, and I mean that quite literally. Harold, for one,
> has decided to be a gopher. No one is quite sure why, since he was doing
> just fine as a harbinger of doom, but he suddenly got it into his head one
> day that gophers have a pretty good life. Landscape architects were called
> in (he attempted to get Weird Al himself, who studied landscape
> architecture before deciding that being Weird Al would make him more
> money), and holes were dug, underground caverns were hollowed out, and now
> we rarely hear from him at all, especially since his cell service
> underground is so spotty.
>
> Then there's Maud, who was last seen boarding a cruise ship headed for
> Mexico. We all saw her off, or we at least waved goodbye to a cruise ship,
> but we didn't really see her. But she claimed that was where she was going,
> and who are we to argue?
>
> Then there's Polly, our resident expert on Misused Words. She went on an
> expedition to find the Lost Words of Azkhaban, which happens to be a real
> place, though rumors say it doesn't exist at all. She shouldn't have even
> gone on that expedition, but Marvin was busy. It would normally have been
> his job, since he's in charge of Lost and Misplaced Words, but he was busy
> having a spa day when the assignment came up. Polly, who has the energy
> level of a three year old on speed, doesn't hesitate to jump on any
> lingering assignments.
>
> The three year old on speed was just a metaphor -- we really don't have any
> three year olds on speed wandering around the facility, and I can only
> guess what that would be like.
>
> We do not recommend providing speed or any other drug to children of any
> age.
>
> The point being, there are stories, but the particular ones I have in mind
> are not currently accessible. They reside somewhere in the recesses of my
> mind, which lately has been spending far too much time on things like
> 1099's, W-2's, 1040's, W-3's, and other things defined by series of letters
> and numbers. This is my busy season, which means it's time for me to Stop
> Messing Around and Get On With Things. Deadlines loom with all the urgency
> of a midnight awakening that tells me I must get to the bathroom, and I
> must do it quickly. These deadlines push the stories to dark places where
> they aren't easily located, though I can feel them back in there, pushing
> to get out, looking for a way to come back into the light. It annoys the
> bejesus out of me, let me tell you. They don't want to stay where they are,
> they want to be out in the open, so they can be admired for their words and
> sentences, so they can preen, which they are quite fond of doing ("Look at
> me!" they say, not all shy), and so they can continue their life cycle.
> Idea, conception, life, decay, disuse, and then ignominy.
>
> "Do you really want to go there?" I ask them, wondering if they wouldn't be
> happier being unknown than to be ridiculed for not living up to the hype.
>
> "We must!" they yell back at me, "We must be known, even if we're to die a
> sad and humiliating death!"
>
> I fear for them, the stories. They have so much hope, they don't understand
> how hard life can be. They don't understand that even if they are good
> stories, behave themselves, eat all their veg, exercise regularly, there's
> still a possibility that no one will care. They say they don't mind though,
> they're just tired of not existing, and who am I to argue?
>
> So today I have no stories, but that's not because there are no stories.
> It's only because they haven't bludgeoned their way out yet. Some of them
> don't want to come out at all, they lie back in the recesses and curl up
> into little balls, happy to stay where they are, known only to me, but
> mostly they want out, and they will keep insisting on having their way
> until I give in.
>
> M
>