Story Is Far Older Than The Art

I Come From A Long Line Of Tellers: Mesemondok, Old Hungarian Women Who Tell While Sitting On Wooden Chairs With Their Plastic Pocketbooks On Their Laps, Their Knees Apart, Their Skirts Touching The Ground... And Cuentistas, Old Latina Women Who Stand, Robust Of Breast, Hips Wide, And Cry Out The Story Ranchera Style. Both Clans Storytell In The Plain Voice Of Women Who Have Lived Blood And Babies, Bread And Bones. For Them, Story Is A Medicine Which Strengthens And Arights The Individual And The Community.

While Archetypes May Emanate Through Us For Short Periods Of Time, In What We Call Numinous Experience, No Woman Can Emanate An Archetype Continuously. Only The Archetype Itself Can Withstand Such Projections Such As Ever-able, All Giving, Eternally Energetic. We May Try To Emulate These, But They Are Ideals, Not Achievable By Humans, And Not Meant To Be. Yet The Trap Requires That Women Exhaust Themselves Trying To Achieve These Unrealistic Levels. To Avoid The Trap, One Has To Learn To Say 'halt' And 'stop The Music,' And Of Course Mean It.

Stories Set The Inner Life Into Motion, And This Is Particularly Important Where The Inner Life Is Frightened, Wedged, Or Cornered. Story Greases The Hoists And Pulleys, It Causes Adrenaline To Surge, Shows Us The Way Out, Down, Or Up, And For Our Trouble, Cuts For Us Fine Wide Doors In Previously Blank Walls, Openings That Lead To The Dreamland, That Lead To Love And Learning, That Lead Us Back To Our Own Real Lives As Knowing Wildish Women.

Writing, Real Writing, Should Leave A Small Sweet Bruise Somewhere On The Writer . . . And On The Reader.

To Love Pleasure Takes Little. To Love Truly Takes A Hero Who Can Manage His Own Fear.