A Tower of Tales
I seem to be surrounded by stories. I tell them, and in a sense, they tell me. I can think of how I am my story, the whole lineage of struggles and triumphs, the forays into the unknown; the fearful confrontations, and the chasing after desires. They parade before me like trains out of tunnels from the past. I am so and so, and that story requires that I behave like him. It is my shifting story, my measure, and my guide, as I recount from the past and project a future — stories linked to stories.
This week I received news my Grand Aunt passed away after 95 years, so I’m immersed in her story and how it intertwined with mine throughout my past, and how I must attend her memorial service next week. Stories of my mortality swirl with memories, cycling with the memory of her, even though she is no longer here. Also this week, the ongoing story of searching for work continues, and while I engage stories about my Grand Aunt and me, underlying them is the anxiety of finding a job, linked to so many imaginative stories of poverty, searching, measuring up, and so on.
Every morning, it seems, I’m aware of constructing my world as I wake up, orienting myself in place and time, so I can project myself in imaginative space to where I will be. I pick up stories as If putting on my clothes. I remember them from yesterday and recycle them and reorder them, reinforcing my place here. Underneath every story retold is a substantiation of the essential story of ‘I am’, and that backs up my location as a sensory body ‘here’. Grounded in my senses, wrapped and bundled in my stories, I feel real and tangible in time and space.
I love how Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) pointed to the heavens and humanity’s relentless quest for knowledge: “With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually we reach the dim boundary the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurements for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.”
And I also love how Rinpoché points inwardly calling our attention to explore how, “Substance takes form through stories that translate zeroless space into dimensionality… Stories… enact dimensionality.” (DTS p.61)
From these two statements I’m drawn from the farthest reaches of the known, of time and distance, to the depths of my being where distance is deconstructed, and dissolved. Where I can step back and observe my stories, luxuriate in the space this affords me, and open to what is unconstructed, to a sensual connection at the root of language and telling of stories.
David
I chose the photo of the glass tower above, created by the renowned artist and glass blower Dale Chihuli, because it represented a good metaphor for the self. I liked the play on words in the suggestion that visually the work consisted of a tower of individually handmade glass ‘tails‘, that stood for me as a representation of countless stories or ‘tales‘ that we wrap ourselves in, as if to provide us substance in time and space. But a closer look at the construction reveals the ‘tails‘ or ‘tales‘ are transparent after all, while they may feel substantial they can be seen through. While we may feel naked without our stories to embrace us, they are not fixed boundaries or bindings.
David
Beautiful, brother D. Knowing you aren’t feeling sorry for yourself, I extend my heart to you anyway in the midst of this loss, and of your search for new work, with all the questions about life, meaning, and mortality that these issues raise.
A number of the images you used were really striking – the story-trains barreling out of the tunnels of the past; putting on stories each morning like clothes; searching the ghostly edges of the universe where landmarks are hardly distinguishable from the shadows at the edge of knowing…
I’m enjoying taking this journey with you.
All the best,
B.