Fire

When I was little, there was a big sticker on the window of my bedroom that let firefighters know that a child slept there. I was always told that if there was a fire, I should never open my door, but climb out the window to safety. Sometimes I would lay awake in my bed and try to imagine how I would perform in a fire. I knew that I should just leave, because my life was the most valuable. But in the safe darkness I would imagine that I was able to heroically save my stuffed animals too. Maybe I would open the window and quickly throw things out the window before running. Where should I start? In my drawers to save some clothes? In my closet to save my stuffed animals? The more I imagined, the more I was able to save it all, coming back multiple times for loads before having to run for it--presumably with all of my precious belongings in my arms.
I guess I was just trying to make sense of how I would survive if disaster struck, hoping and praying that I could be prepared or strong enough to save myself from total devastation. The idea of everything I owned being burned in a fire was one of my true fears as a child. I would see pictures of burnt homes and burnt toys and it would strike fear in my heart.
I still wonder what would happen if I lost everything. I feel like it's a very real possibility, even though I constantly tell myself to relax and go about life in happy denial that harm could ever touch me. Being a missionary kid meant giving up a lot of securities and material objects of comfort over and over again. But it also meant that I mostly knew it was coming. I knew that we would be moving to France soon, and that meant I only got two suitcases. I knew that I couldn't take the teddy bear my French classmates gave me as a going away present onto the plane with me to Africa. I knew that when we left Africa, the community and world that I loved would dissolve as all of my friends left the place never to return again. And maybe that makes me more confident that even if everything disappears, new growth comes and fills in the holes. Or maybe it just makes me more paranoid that one day I will have to leave everything I now love behind, and so I should get prepared.
I've been thinking about fire today, because my brother lives in San Diego. He expects that his house will be fine, but he has evacuated anyway just because things are getting so bad. And even if he survives this without major loss, so many others are losing right now. My heart goes out to them. There's nothing worse than loss that strikes when you least expect it, or when you are powerless save that which is most dear.

Embodied Story

Yesterday I attended an all-day workshop titled "Thinking Like a Storyteller" given by two accomplished storytellers. We each brought a story that we wanted to "work on," and then the leaders gave us several activities to use to craft our stories. We never used paper or pen, note taking was discouraged, and the leaders never expected us to get out the stories and read them. What I learned to do is imagine my story with such detail and care, that I could begin to remove myself and any opinions or preconceptions I may have about the story from my telling. The leader would tell the participants, "stop acting, just tell us the story." She talked about seeing the story so completely that the telling was an unfolding of that vision for the audience. The other leader had a saying that exemplified that. It comes from East Africa.
The Griot says, "I have been and I have seen."
The listeners respond, "See again so that we also can see."

The lessons were similar if not identical to the ones I've learned in writing classes:
1. The narrator has to be believable, whether it's fiction, memoir, or storytelling, the audience has to trust the narrator or it won't work.
2. Be concrete. Show don't tell.
3. Let the story take on its own life. A story that is proving a point isn't a story. It's politics or advertisement or manipulation. A story follows the facts and leaves space for the listener (reader) to have their own experience within the story.

But there's something so powerful about learning storytelling not as a writer, but as someone who will embody that story for an audience. It's so intimate. It's a call to slow down and really live within the story.

All during the workshop I felt like I was taking the story that I had read and pushing it out in front of me. I was imagining the details of it like a movie before my eyes. I was sitting with the characters and contemplating the choices they made. I was trying to know the story with my senses.

And I watched the other participants doing the same. I listened to the leaders critique other stories, and as they slowed us down and pared the stories down to their essential cores, it became clear why a simple scene like an old man sitting beside a well, underneath a tree, dusty from travel, about to eat a cake baked by his wife and sacrificed by his 100 children was immensely powerful. The well reaching down to the underworld, the tree reaching up to the heavens, and an old man facing his only sustenance, the symbol of his family's love and trust. It became a moment of suspense, a moment of wonder.

It's made me think about something I heard once about discipleship. I heard that Christianity was never about the written text. Jesus left no written records. And following Jesus was never about adhering to a creed. It was about living out the stories.

I feel like learning to craft story in this way will be a source of rich life for me. As I heard all day yesterday, "stop trying to figure it out, don't worry about getting it right, just be present to your audience and stick with the story."

Dance Class Observation

I'm puzzled by an observation I made during my last Dance Therapy Class. We were doing our usual closing time of moving to music when the professor asked us to move into a circle and to shift our awareness to the others in the group. She danced up to my left side and I moved over to close in the circle. As she danced next to me, I became very aware of her warmth and energy. I could feel her energy like a warm embrace on my left side. We weren't touching, there was about 6-8 inches between us, but her presence was unmistakable. I tried to focus on the student dancing on my right side, wondering if I turned my awareness to her movements if I would feel the same connection. I made eye contact, smiled, and tried to match the style and tempo of the student's movements. But I never felt the same energy. In fact I couldn't feel anything at all. Meanwhile, even when I was trying to focus on the student, I continued to feel my professor's presence.
This experience fascinates me. I think I will discuss it with my professor on Thursday.

MK, TCK, What's the Difference?

Last Wednesday night in my writing class, we started discussing what kind of writing existed that captured the MK (missionary kid) experience. I said how I had been unable to find very many first person accounts about the MK experience, and that the ones I did find were mostly written by my parents' generation. Someone in the class mentioned The Poisonwood Bible as an example of something that captured the MK experience.
"Didn't Barbara Kingsolver grow up in Africa?" someone asked.
I jumped in with the clarification that her parents were NOT missionaries but government workers, and that the book portrayed such an extreme religious figure that I didn't feel it really represented the majority of mission work.
One of the students said to me, "as someone without any religious experience, I would be curious why you see an important distinction between someone who had missionary parents and someone who had parents working overseas for the government. I just don't see what's so different about those two experiences."
Something inside of me rose up like an angry bear when she said it. I felt something in me want to scream, THERE'S A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE! And that world is religion.
But I've been thinking more about the question, and I'm not sure that the differences are so distinct. There's a title that lumps MKs, military brats, and kids who lived internationally for government and business reasons and that's TCK - Third Culture Kids. What we share is the experience of being raised in a culture that is not the native culture of our parents. So we don't belong to our parents' culture and we don't belong to the culture of the country where we live. It's a lot like second generation immigrants, except that the expectation is that once we leave the house, we'll return to our parent's culture. (Though many just continue traveling or living overseas because that's more natural.)
But what is it in me that felt so defensive about the missionary experience? Obviously the faith factor is unique among MKs, but why the strong emotional reaction? Maybe Barbara Kingsolver did experience much of what I experienced, but for some reason I have my doubts. And I don't think The Poisonwood Bible captures something critical about mission work. I don't think it captures how ordinary, organized, and corporate it is. It does a good job of exploring the way extreme belief meets cross-cultural impasses. It's a great book to explore the rape and pillaging of Africa. But it's not a book that captures my experience. I want to keep thinking about why that is, because I might get closer to figuring out what my experience was.

Pulse and Acupuncture

Today I saw my acupuncturist and told her all of the strange things I was experiencing in my body. She was surprised that the treatment had inspired a physical detox. She said she would have expected a big emotional release or a shift in my perception or in a relationship, or some change in my dreams. I think some of that might also be happening, but it's harder for me to know.
She suspected that the treatment opened up the left side of my body, and then with the Indian Summer weather and the detox yoga class, my body just decided to go with it.
The good news though is that today my pulse was 64. For months (even years) my pulse went from 70 up to 86. A pulse of 72 was a good week, and rare. A month ago I was 86. Two weeks ago I was 76. Today I was 64. So something shifted. My body has released some of the heat that has been plaguing me. She suspects the heat was from the malaria I had in high school, so it's very encouraging to finally see something change.

Update

So I'm still dealing with the tail end of this detox. I went to my chiropractor on Tuesday, and he was shocked at the state of my muscles and back. He said it was unlike any other time he's seen me, that I bore the signs of a full-on detox. His metaphor: "It's like your body took everything in the attic and the basement and all the closets and every room in the house and put it all in the living room." I just hope I feel better tomorrow, because I am flying to Florida.
And that's the other update. I leave for a family visit tomorrow night. I won't be back to NYC until Tuesday afternoon, when I hit the ground running. The week I get back I have tutoring, classes, a night out with Len for Eric's birthday, a conference for my storytelling internship, and I have to plan, cook, and clean for a big party I'm throwing for Eric's birthday on Saturday the 13th. I'm getting tired in anticipation of the week. :)
I'm looking forward to seeing Jonathan and my grandparents who I haven't seen in almost a year. I can't believe it's been so long.