Ursula le Guin writes: "The Hero has decreed . . . that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of the narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it. "I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us. "One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I once read a how-to-write manual that said, 'A story should be seen as a battle,' and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.) "Conflict, competi...
S igh, surrender to sanity To sorrow, to suffering, to sacred. Shake success Sounds like I am. Sane, safe, sonorous. Smokes and mirrors snake my seeing Steal sometimes with 'shoulds' and 'should nots' Shhhhhhhhhhh she says. Surround your soul Allow source to surmount To flood these shallows Shift sight from sins that separate ourselves . Return to her. When in search to shoulder the pain Be still in thine center Slowly steep into the deep Open wide by sound For meaning makes our purpose.
As I am haunted by the events that occurred late Sunday afternoon, I struggle not to feel robbed myself. The reactions of one student who was followed inside a yoga studio that I attend and work at by a lone gunned man, versus the reactions of another student who was mugged by the same man outside the studio appear on opposite ends of a spectrum. I can only make sense of it by writing about it and putting it out of my mind. We'll call her Cindy, was a young lady perhaps in her mid to late 20s who because she was immediately consoled by the other students caught off guard in the lobby by the incident- was pleasantly calm and seemed just glad that he was gone. When I approached her with a glass of sweet reddish kombucha, she welcomed it with a smile still standing in the classroom beside the spot where she had been held up for her car keys. She was not shuddering as I had half expected, but surprisingly collected. Later I found out from the teacher who had dropped down on her ...
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