Archives for posts with tag: memoir

Stories our lives tell us

November 7, 2010 //

This little video from Brian Andreas is a good reminder that we constantly edit our lives. So we might as well edit them in a way that gives us joy and a sense of accomplishment and possibility. Otherwise we’re just dragging around a heavy bag of regret, shame, guilt, disappointment, and all those other stones that invariably drop into our lives.

The editing is a daily event. Something happens. We tell friends about it. Some parts of the story work. Others fall flat. Unless we’re completely oblivious to the reactions of others, we make mental notes of what worked and what didn’t, where people’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, when they lost interest, and the times they were leaning forward as if they were gobbling every word we uttered.

Next time we pull out that story, we spin a version influenced by the first telling…or the first ten tellings. Eventually we settle into a version we’re happy with.

At that point additional edits are only slight tailorings for specific audiences. The story line and chosen details remain pretty much the same, and we carry that story around just waiting for an opportunity to share it.

Of course, some stories stop working for us. We move on, choose a new way of looking at our life, forgive our nemesis. So we drop the story from our repertoire or subject it to major revisions.

Ivan Doig turns it around in a way that delights me in Ride with Me, Mariah Montana. He writes: “Memories are stories our lives tell us.”

Of course, stories do more than help us figure out who we are at any given time. They also create—or divide—community. Harold Rosen once wrote:

It is an interesting feature of personal storytelling that it usually sets in motion a sequence of stories. Tell a hospital story and you will provoke others, just as jokes beget jokes. If you analyse a sequence of this kind you will almost always discover that, far from being a random collection, they constitute an endeavor to reach a collective understanding of some important theme like fear, courage, loss of eccentricity. ~ Harold Rosen, “Stories At Work”

That makes the stories we tell even more important. We live them, exchange them, and try to pair them with other stories in a never-ending dance. And how we tell them makes a difference, in our own lives, to our families and friends, and to the larger community.

Tags importance of stories, meaning of stories, memoir, Personal narratives, role of stories, writing to remember

Categories Meaning of stories, Personal narratives, The importance of storytelling

The poetry of work

October 2, 2010 //

Cathryn with ukelin, instrument from the thirties

There was a time when my ex and I took the stage as part of the cowboy poetry scene. For him, it was a dream come true. For me, it was fingernails on a blackboard. Not for the other poets we listened to, whose work came from a deep place, but for me. I was always a reluctant farmer and rancher. The inequity between outflow and inflow of cash gave me high blood pressure for the first time in my life.

Our colleagues on the circuit were completely smitten by the life. I was a reluctant participant.

Even a reluctant rancher cannot help but understand the role of cowboy poetry. The poems are stories of the land, of the life, of tragedy and joy, of comedy and pain, and, ultimately, of the meaning of life. On the British Columbia circuit, rhyming was preferred but not required. Cattle and horses were royal subjects. Sheep were an embarrassment.

Some of the "real" cowboy poets at the Prince George, BC, festival

I had always been in the camp that derided country music and cowboy poetry. I believed the mockery that if you played country music (and, for me, cowboy poetry) backward you got your wife back, your truck back, your dog back, etc.

My brief experience on the cowboy poetry circuit taught me how wrong I was. There was nothing cynical or shallow about the poems I heard. There was celebration of the land, the people, the animals. There was agony over weather, death, injury, illness, and financial losses.

The poems were stories. They were literate, elegiac, funny, mournful, celebratory. They were stories of a way of life that works its way deep into the soul.

Pioneer Ranch, my home for nine years

My ex and I had both sheep and cattle. I never bonded with the cows. I adored the sheep. Still, I’m grateful for all of it—the times when all plans were halted because we had to tend to a cow, sheep or pig in difficult labour, the hours spent stretching wire for new fences, the endless rounds on a tractor as we cut, baled, and brought in the hay, the magic of Northern Lights, the wary trust of wildlife.

So in that spirit, I share with you a song we recorded on “The Bull Rider’s Wife”, with thanks to talented lyricist Fred J. Eaglesmith. The song is a story, and the story still squeezes my heart.

13 Summerlea

Tags cowboy poetry, importance of stories, meaning of stories, memoir, Personal narratives

Categories Healing power of stories, Meaning of stories, Memoir, Personal narratives, The importance of storytelling

In it for the long haul

August 4, 2010 //

As I’m wont to do when my partner is away, I was up late last night, working on the computer until my eyes crossed. I remembered too late there was a program I’d wanted to watch but picked up the remote anyway.

Some of the dozens of journals and notebooks I haul with me every time I move

I lucked onto a short documentary on William Stafford. He’s long been one of my favorite poets. I remember the sense of loss I felt when he died. I still have a bright memory of a reading he did at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company, as well as the books I bought that night.

The quote below slipped by too quickly in the documentary. I caught most of the first sentence, none of the second.

Fortunately, a retired pastor, Muriel T. Stackley, knew the whole quote and posted it in an essay on the Mennonite Weekly Review. She wrote: “This comes from a 1990 lecture at Bluffton University in Ohio, drawing on notes from Stafford’s four years in camps for conscientious objectors to war.”

I’m posting the quote for three reasons:

I’ll need to re-read it now and then. Maybe I’ll even memorize it and pull it out of my mental hat next time someone asks questions that show they’re mystified by my spending so much time on blogs that don’t add coins to my coffers.
I have decades of journals and letters that I haul with me whenever I move. Not every entry or letter is worth saving, but many are, at least while I’m alive to enjoy them.
In mining those journals and letters for stories to share on the blogs, I’m re-visiting my life. There are passages painful to read, but mostly I look back with gratitude at all I’ve experienced.

Keep a journal, and don’t assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy. Artists and peace workers are in it for the long haul and not to be judged by immediate results. Redemption comes with care. In our culture we can oppose but not subvert. Openness is part of our technique. ~ William Stafford