The body remembers stories. The body remembers stories in details. What we were wearing, where we were standing, what precisely we were doing when . . .
The world is frozen in time, only not frozen, but captured. A small film of a moment. We see it. This is the moment before, the ordinary world.
And then everything changes. Here again, the body remembers stories in details. First this and then this. An action, an exchange. A misunderstanding and then clarity, descending like planes.
The mind asks questions. What happened? The mind plays the event over and over, trying to grasp it. Shock. And then, over time, shock is replaced by . . . . something else. Acceptance? Something close: story. This is what happened? becomes This is what happened.
Now we search the story for meaning, for sense. We study the imagery and the characters as closely as any English teacher ever did. Seeking: symbols, sense, an arc, a resolution.
In the end, we are left with story. We tell it again and again. We exchange stories. Here’s mine; what’s yours? The years roll by and they are made not of moments, not of days, not of tragedies or achievements but of stories.
No wonder we must write.
Nice, Elizabeth! I love it!