Narrative Matters

Don’t just look OBSERVE

Don’t just swallow TASTE

Don’t just sleep DREAM

Don’t just think FEEL

Don’t just exist LIVE

I live in France.  I have lived here for about two years now.  It’s interesting from time to time to stumble on how ideas which are similar are expressed differently in French compared to English.  So they are similar but not the same.

Here is an example – in English, where we talk about “giving up our soul”, in French the equivalent translates as “giving back  our soul”.  What a difference.  In both, the idea that the soul has an existence beyond ours, but the French is much less individualistic.  Our soul is something which we have been lent and must return.  ‘Soul’ as a life-force in the physical body, as long as the physical body can endure.  And when it dies, the soul returns and becomes part again of the source.

I don’t believe in past lives.  But I do believe in a ‘soul thread’, a continuation of each one of us through our actions and our words, through our relationship with each person we have ever met, the means by which we have changed them and they us…   the way in which we have affected them, which will alter in some small way how they in turn affect others.  And so the soul thread is eternal, and perhaps what we give back is the means our bodies have on loan to keep spinning that thread by connecting with others.  It is temporary.  But when we stop spinning, our part of the soul thread is still there.  That is the soul’s eternity… and ours.

 A Dancing Dream Janet smiles and lumbers forward. Cheryl downstairs usually walks steps forth, body straight, and stomps loudly. Janet leans right, left. We follow simultaneously. Arms and feet stay,remain forward. Drum beats fill the dance room. Cheryl sometimes listens to loud music or radio sermons. Her front apartment door shuts loudly. I awake ignoring neighbor’s loud music and footsteps. Footsteps and Janet’s wheelchair were in my dance dream. Later I was weeding, cutting, sweeping,I was dancing outside with rake and broom.Nicole Taylor May 17, 2006

Little Dramas (A Dance Ability tribute) Walking by the practice,I was intrigued. Three women,One man.dressed simply in black.Two physically disabled students. Two begged me to stay and watch the tribute to a retiring teacher. Four friends danceinto our sight.They stand as if waiting for a bus to drive into our hallway. They lean and support each other up,posing head on shoulders and assisted by cane or chair. The friends sit and wait on bench.Each takes a turn to stand, stretch, and dance. They flutter and flitter into beautiful butterflies. A long, blue cloth flows into a cool,refreshing stream. It bathes and showers them.It gives stones for skipping or walking the causeway. Larger groups gather.Curious eyes sparkle.The retiree arrives.She sits front and center. Our man Jerry pays tribute snaking along the floor with striking cane and romantic song. Nicole TaylorDecember 2003

In the end we are the stories of our being, woven into the stories of all those we have touched, each of us a fibre being spun into a yarn and affecting its texture and its colour and its nature and becoming a part with the million others of the thread that weaves the tapestry… and this is how we matter, for the touching makes us part of another’s touching, and another, and another…
“…I knew this man who said…”
“…and she told me how…”
“…he helped, a total stranger…”
“…whoever she was, she made the difference…”
“…someone somewhere said…”
“…I always do it this way, I suppose it started somewhere…”

So what matter if you can’t recall my name? I am out there still, for ever, somewhere, and you could find me, if you just knew where to look.

By SC Jan 2009