Story telling is a pleasure, it is that simple for me, as long as I don’t let other things color it. For instance, I do not wish to see myself as your teacher, that is of course unless you will promise to be mine as well. It is not simple entertainment either; it is more like the out going breath after a moment of awe. Not all of my stories do as I wish, some bend or break in the making and I share them anyway, hoping the listener will see the wabisabi in them.

I remind myself, that to dance well, you must dance. So here is a story; rain after a dry patch.

The Manifester’s Dilemma

     I have always been a capable manifester. Hey, that’s how I got the gig as a Bard. I can imagine darn near anything, and that is over 50% of any story or song. I was never intentionally careless about the results either, I made sure to get to know my audience and what it was they needed to change in their world, before any performance. But it’s not the sort of thing that you can really control. Manifesting, really good manifesting, comes of its own accord, and even the best of intentions aren’t powerful enough to prevent the roll of creative energy, when it gets going.

     By now, I bet, you’ve figured out what the problem is here. There is no way that I can ever settle down. Sometimes I need to get going fast, before the sun comes up, before I see what the results have been. They will know, the people who heard me speaking, singing, playing, flinging a story sky high. They will know. They will blame me, and rightly so. I am the cause.

     The reason this is true, is that I am weak. I want so badly to be a part of their world, to stay for a while, to be accepted and loved for my creations, for myself. I will meet with a few of them and hit it off. The mothers and shop keepers, the kids and grandparents, the old crones and gaffers, and occasionally there will be a special someone who smiles so beautifully that it makes your heart ache. It makes me long for the things that I sing about, for the things that I make true just for them. 

     Right there is the hitch. You can’t really manifest your own world. If you did, well, you would go around being some sort of demi-god and greed would be your amulet. No matter how determined you might be to be the good guy, most humans (and I definitely fall into the ‘ordinary’ category) slip right into greed when they have too much power. You’ve heard the saying ‘drunk on power’? This is where it comes from. Imagine someone, kind of like me, who can make things come out just the way they want them, out of nowhere, and being able to say “l’ll just have the one, thanks…”. It is not going to happen.

     Manifesting though, that happens. It just pours out of me when I least expect it. It is not at all like the performances that I plan, the ones where I am thinking about how these people in the pub, in this little village, will be drawn together and see a common cause, or find a deep need to care for their elderly, or teach music to their children, or anything highly useful and remarkably prosaic, like that.  What does happen, is I will get an audience that I really like, one who seems to get who I am and gives me the impression that they honor me. They get generous and friendly, buying me a few too many, wanting me to try some concoction that only this place sells: “we’re famous for it”! The evening gets on and only a few of us are left around the fire and someone asks for something special. They want a ghost story, or a warrior’s tale, something with a witch and a beautiful woman, and I am doomed.

     You imagine that I should be able to stop myself, to hold back and put them off, but that is not how it works. I am not the creator; I am a conduit. Otherwise I would have a big house on the hill and six fat babies and a cow and someone else to milk it. Instead, before I can remember all the other times, it starts. I open and the story just rolls out into the air, clear and new and vulnerable and intensely dangerous. Sometimes I sing and play, sometimes I whisper and shout, but I have no way to stop it. I wish I did.

     The last time was just six months ago. I was in a place very like the one I am in now, with a small valley, leading up to a more mountainous area. Plenty of grazing, a built-up place that does trading with the cities that are closest, it had a school with two teachers, and a hat shop. It’s the hat shop that really makes it, I think. An ordinary little village makes its head gear at home; they knit and sew and felt out all the pretty utilitarian things a community might wear for themselves, but a place that has made the next level has a real milliner all its own. I made the mistake of going into that shop and ended up talking with the guy who owned it for several hours. I will never be able to forgive myself.

     I sang songs of love that night. I don’t usually do that right away, but the place smelled of springtime and was full to bursting with courting couples. The milliner appeared to be on his own. He was a widower of two years, I was told by the bartender, and you might expect that he would be ready to find someone to be with, but he was alone. I was so caught up in the mood that I had set, that when he asked me to tell a romantic ghost story, I fell right in to it.

     I smiled and took a slow sip of my wine, heady, not sweet but remarkably fragrant. The lights lowered by themselves, blowing out with the opening of a door, or guttering in their own wax. The fire flared. All they could see was my face, caught by the flickering flames beside me.

     “There was once a man who lived in a small village. He considered himself to be remarkably fortunate, for he had found a profession selling cloth.”

(Close, but not too close, there is a trick to including listeners in their own stories). 

      “It pleased him, because his character was such that he loved to trade and sell; he was a friendly, chatty, sort. Because he was also fair and diligent, his reputation was good and he became a success, both in his own village and the surrounding ones as well. This allowed him to grow in the esteem of all who knew him, so when the prettiest, brightest, and feistiest young woman in the countryside went looking for a husband, she came looking for him. His name was Rath and hers was Reeta. They seemed made for each other.”

(You don’t look worried, and you are right, these stories can only be told once, with consequences. After that they are only the husks of stories: beautifully scented, but empty.)

     “Being individuals of romantic nature, they spent the days of their courtship walking the paths and ranging in the hills of their valley and resting under trees. In short, they spent their time doing what lovers have always done: nothing and everything without the slightest complaint or expectation. Each day brought them closer and they discovered just how similar and how different they were.”

     “Both of them were bright and curious about every little thing. They spoke of their neighbors’ lives, the workings of a caterpillar that spun his cocoon, the flavor of cheeses and of the sweet tips of grass pulled along the way. Where they differed was less obvious, Rath was very driven to work hard, as was Reeta, but she displayed, over and over a turn toward adventure, a way to expend her vast energy, that he did not understand. As simple as a race up a hill or leaning well out on a limb for the ripest fruit, Reeta put the tiniest bit of thrill in, wherever she could. When she found out that Rath held back from these things, she began to implore and then to pull him into her world. Mostly he only smiled at what he thought she would outgrow in time, but sometimes he let her have her way, and bemused, follow her on some inexplicable route to a cave or (in only the warmest of weather) out into the river to tred the rocky island there.” 

     “Eventually, but not before the years end, they were married. Rath may have expected Reeta’s vibrant wildness to fade after they began a family, but that was not to be. A year went by, then two more and no child was born. The baby things that her mother had given her were put away, but Reeta danced all the more, laughed, and ran as if nothing should stop her. Rath agreed in his heart, but he also knew this person, his sweet friend, and he worried. He worried that she danced a bit wildly, laughed a fraction too loudly, and ran with such abandon that he wished to simply reach out and sooth her. If only he could catch up.”

     “It was on a Sunday ramble, a picnic carried up to the highest view of their village, that she fell. Just out of his reach, she stood and followed a butterfly, leaping as it fluttered up. When Rath saw the direction of her leaps, growing wilder and more energetic as the butterfly rose higher and higher, he called out. He jumped up and shouted as he ran. In the high grass the edges of the cliff were hidden.”

     You can see how this was going; the solitude, deep sorrow, the ghost who renders his soul whole again. His playful lover returned to him for all time, so that his neighbors thought him mad. I did that to him, a lonely man who might have had a life, a future, a family if he had not had the bad fortune to meet me. I did it because of this ‘gift’, this ‘thing’ that uses me as its brush, its mallet. That is why I cannot stay.

     He came and found me, after only a few days, nearly 30 miles away. I thought that he was going to kill me and I hardly felt anything about it. It would mean I could finally quit and find my own peace. He thanked me! He told me that he had never been happier, now that they would be together always. I felt like throwing up, but I took his hand and wished him well.

     That is why I will be homeless until I die. I can’t make this my home, or you my lover. No. But I agree, if you come with me, the way you sing, the way you play that lute, the way you kiss, we might have half a chance.