What's your favourite story?

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I see the world through stories and that's probably why I get such a 'home coming' / 'at peace' feeling whenever I am in my book sanctuary's :-)

Seeing one's life as a story has given me a great deal of freedom. Freedom to re-write, freedom to plot for the future, freedom for the 'concrete' in the world (if there is anything like that) to be broken down into a more nebulous 'thing'.

An example (a mini-story, if you will):
A lot of people that were around my life in the late 1990's would have had some experience of how Jude and I broke up. I am sure that each one of these people has an image of how it occurred, how I dealt with it and it all 'turned out for the best'. That final phrase is one commonly used, along side, "Wow, it's amazing how you and Jude stayed friends..." (or similar). Part of my story (and potentially hers, but I don't know how it is for her in her life) is that there were some pretty hairy times at the end, we were most definitely not friends, at times were extremely angry with each other and down right nasty. But that's not the way we tell it - we've both (I think), left that side of the story out and re-written it.

Now, you could say that I am merely disclosing another part of the concrete reality that was "our separation". I wouldn't necessarily disagree but I don't know if there is one "concrete event" to which we are all dancing around, maybe there is. My view of it is that the words we use enable us to see the "event" as a flexible, flowing, evolving story and is this choice of words that gives us the freedom (see above :-).

So, to answer the question - my favourite story is usually the one being generated as we all connect with each other. My favourite written stories are the ones that somehow twist my world view either dramatically or subtly.

Flickr picture: Automat's: Work Currently Not In Process

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