Where are the Storytellers?

Long before writing was invented, human beings read thier world. They interpreted their dreams and the flights of birds. They read the intestines of sacrificial animals and the memories of their ancestors. They read the things that surprised them, or the things that reminded them of something else. Most of all, they read in the places where there were holes -- spaces -- gaps. They filled up the blanks of the universe, as though they were pages, with writing. Leonardo advised aspiring artists to "discove" the pictures to be found in the cracks in walls; Chinese sages were conceived as their mothers stepped into the footprints of unicorns; all of us make up our lives out of the cracks in the walls of our past memories and the unicorn footprints of our future. The making of a life is similar to the making of a text. We live by reading our own stories[...].

Lynda Sexon