Story Time

When I think about writing a story, I usually decide that I’d rather go kill a centipede. Yep, one of those ugly hairy ones that make me run away, grab the poison, and proceed to avoid that corner of the house for a month. If not killing a centipede, than perhaps I consider sabotaging my health with 620 calories of cinnamon roll—and let’s not even talk about fat. I mean, last time I had two bites of a Panera cinnamon roll, I immediately felt it sort of stick three-fourths of the way down as my stomach warned the rest of my digestive system that this was not going to be pretty. Yep, much much better than composing any sort of narrative anything.

The last time I wrote a story was over four years ago for junior-year honors English. It sucked. I’m talkin’ process and product. I’d never hated writing more in my entire life. I decided that my “writing career” that my teacher continually nudged me to pursue over the course of that year would have to limited to “stuff”—and maybe some poetry.

I’ve grown a lot since then as a person who feels the need to say things on paper. I’ve grown a lot as a person who has the ability to say things on paper. I’ve also realized that I tell stories and form characters more often than I know—it’s just that I don’t know that I’m doing it. It’s as if I stomped on the stupid centipede on my way down the street and discover later that there’s guts in the crevice of my sole. And you know what?—centipede guts aren’t so bad when I didn’t have to see the thing wriggling around from one damp shadow to the next. Ugh, and the crunch—I can’t do the crunch. But like taking care of centipedes in their current fallen state, perhaps facing the dreaded narrative giant is merely a psychological blunder. If only I could somehow avoid the crunch. Ick. (But centipedes will be redeemed someday—or perhaps just my psychological disposition to them needs to be fixed. Either way, I can’t wait.)

Thus I’ve been doing what I do when I know the stupid thing won’t even hurt me but I’m still just on-stuck about it: I think, and I think way too hard about it. I make it way more complicated than it has to be because that’s just the way I roll. And besides, it’s fun.

I am ruined and convinced that stories are never just stories. In fact, I can’t read a story just for the sake of a good thrill—I always read to learn. (Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.) And stories, I believe, provide a deeply and universally human way of learning. This is the kind of learning that does not always process its way through the intellectual sift; it simply changes the way you see things. And when we see things from a different angle, we respond to the rooster differently each morning. Maybe it’s just that you’ll hold your spouse a little tighter, or try a little harder, or believe a little in humanity again. Stories can perch us on the side of a mountain and say, “Hey, look at that.” Or maybe not.

I’m reading an analysis of the Rwandan genocide from a Christian perspective. The author, a native of Uganda with Rwandan parents, digs deep into the question about how the most Christianized nation in Africa could begin Easter week celebrating the resurrection of Christ together on Easter Sunday and be, by Thursday of Easter week, intimately slaughtering their fellow congregation members in the very churches where they worshiped together. The answer is illusive and deep, but it is found in the lens through which Rwanda saw itself—the story in which they saw themselves as characters. To make a long story short, Rwanda saw itself as characters in the story of two separate tribes loyal only to themselves while professing to have faith in the story of the one body of Christ. Jesus’ story had not stained their vision of themselves—so they took up machetes instead of the cross. The story they had believed brought them—buried them—in the valley of the shadow of death and said “This is where you belong.”

“From dust to dust,” says Genesis to the unhappy couple and to us, “from dust to dust.” Our author depicts, in perhaps accidental but potent imagery, what this character displacement looks like as he walks through a Catholic church after the genocide: “Behind the altar, the tabernacle that housed the blessed sacrament had been ripped open. It sat there with a hole in the middle, empty. The body of Christ was presumably crushed, mixed with the dust on the floor.” Instead of becoming a part of the story of the resurrection, they returned back the fallen dust of futility.

As a Christian, I am called to write the story of what happened on the third day. What does it look like for a character to wrestle with this reality in the here-and-now? This is my story. Our author describes what Christianity without consequence looks like (both in Rwanda and the west), so what does Christianity with consequence look like? This is my story.

As I read through Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, I realized why African American literature is so important. I realized why the literature of any people is important. It’s that African American folks don’t get to read about their ancestral human experience in the history books. Their history and identity has been preserved in their art—in voices from obscure places. Every writer is a voice to that which may never be able to make the history books, and our children will look there to find who they are. Will we tell them? Even in our ‘casual’ art—especially our casual art—they will learn from whence they’ve come and perhaps be able to find where they are going. If I write for my people, who are my people? Well, my people consist of many different colors.

Questions. Stories begin as I look around and ask questions about what I see. I feel sometimes as though all I do is ask questions. So why is expressing them in narrative form so difficult? I haven’t yet cracked the code on my physiological disposition to centipedes or story-telling, but I know that I have all the necessary means to do what I’ve set out to do. I know we are all characters in the narrative of life, and who we will become depends on whose story your listen to. I know that stories are one of the most basically human things we have—right there with religion and the two have always been entwined. I know that I’m “supposed” to be good at writing stories—so they say.

Yet something still grips me. You see, this is the part where I’m supposed to have an epiphany and tie up all the loose ends. Well, that was the plan anyway. I even went to target the other day and bought a green inked pen and a folder with Perry the Platypus on it--it was supposed to help or something. Oh, fart. I guess I’ll just go and finish my book on Rwanda. When I’m stinking ready to leap from the side of the kiddie pool, I’ll let you know. Stupid centipede…