The story goes on and on

 I keep thinking of the archetype of the exasperated storyteller, compelled to tell a story that has already been repetitive and continues on, insisting on continuing on, in spite of the storyteller's exasperation. I stumbled on this quotation in my Facebook memories today:

"Even though we are born, live and die in the midst of great realization, within our minds we create our own pictures of the world and our value systems, and we pursue only the values that we have created within our own systems. We may cultivate, for example, our reputation as a sincere and virtuous practitioner, instead of simply practicing sincerely and nurturing our virtues. In our minds we are able to create a very complicated fantasy of who we are, a fantasy in which we usually consider ourselves heroes or heroines." ---Shohaku Okumura, excerpt from Realizing Genjokoan, via Doan Brian Roessler

The dynamic of the exasperating story (although in this case, the storyteller did not ever seem to lag or be exasperated in the least) reminds me of my oldest brother, who started a passionately outraged narrative about what an asshole our father was, back around 1990, and, if you catch him now, especially post serious stroke that he had a few years ago, you are liable to hear exactly the same narrative. Since our father's death, four months ago, the narrative has shifted slightly. Now you might hear either a). what an asshole our father was, or b). how guilty my brother feels about how much he hated our father for so long. Wild and exasperating that it took 30 years, and the new dimensions of the story are even worse than the old. But this is the way of the exasperating story. Yet this example is only of a story that is exasperating for *everyone else*, not the storyteller themselves. 

I think Samuel Beckett, among some other writers, knew the reality of the exasperated storyteller exasperated by the story of the storyteller. That's one of the suspect things about a lot of Faulkner's more recursive, multi-narrator works, such as Absalom! Absalom!—the storytellers always seem to have a huge amount of energy and they tumble forward through their stories with fiery passion. Maybe I glossed over certain passages where the storytellers are just irritated by telling the same old story yet again. 

The dynamic goes to a great many myths of storytelling, or truths. The main myth on my mind these days is that we heal by telling the story. I'm sure this is situationally true, or one of those "partial truths." It seems like, superficially at least, talk therapy is based on this myth, although I guess the extra added attraction in that setting is having a "psychopomp" guide one through the story, at least. I do wonder sometimes what some therapists must feel, when they are trapped with an exasperated storyteller, telling an exasperating story for the 1000th time. My own counselor, bless his heart, used to just say, "yeah, I want you to talk about something else today. You're not making any progress on this other shit. I've already provided some tools for you, and you're not using them." Haha. Haha. Haha. etc. 

Anyway, here old Percy is, 67 days after moving to a new city, 54 days since starting a new job. 

Here's to whatever is valuable still, in the old exasperating story. 

Here's to new stories.