Last night I drifted through the internet for hours before turning off the light. Then I dreamt I was working. When I woke up, I went online again. Quickly, so I wouldn’t have to feel the full impact of the restlessness in my body. Sudoku instead of breakfast. News from a fractured world instead of giving more thought to my master’s thesis. “Write about it in the blog,” Janna says. “Write about procrastination.” And I wonder if she’s right. That this too is part of the story. The anguish. The postponement. The feeling of having lost touch with the very core of my project.
I said I wanted to meet a fairy tale. In a genuine meeting where the story could strip me bare. Where my own fears and secret longings might shine through if I stood before an audience to tell it. And it was like that, in the beginning. Old Beiberekan and her adopted daughter came to life and it felt raw and beautiful.
Then I began to perform and produce. And I’ve ended up tangled in a snare of creative decisions, English translations, word choices, and video editing software. It scares me that I might fail. It scares me that I might succeed. Because what if the story truly changes me? The paradox is perfect. Best go back to surfing.
And this is where I get to laugh at myself. Everything seems to have a place in this rich story. Even the postponement. Suddenly I see the young Khan in myself. The hunter who dearly wanted to catch a fine prey but found himself chasing a squirrel from tree to tree all the way to the edge of the kingdom. Do you remember? The one who found his bride and was floored by the force of his feelings for her.
The one who gave her a horse with a silver saddle, and now rides at her side toward their wedding.
(Drawing by Anita from Sagolabbet, our story laboratory, in May)
How quiet she is, he might be thinking. What are we really doing? She’s still so beautiful in his eyes that it hurts. Everything in his life will now be about her. Strange, unnamed feelings stir beneath his ribs, pressing outward. And that’s when he remembers those traps. That’s when he starts thinking about catching fox. That’s when he leaves her to ride alone and turns off into the forest.
It’s been seven years since I was first floored by the power of storytelling. Unlike the young Khan, I didn’t ride quickly home to my parents and say, “Get her for me.” I am of a slower kind. Now, finally, I’m entering a fun new phase in my life—a wedding with stories and myths where I dare to stand and give my own voice to the telling.
But that thing that happens on the path—the slipping away, the fox traps—is something I recognize. It has always been there in my creative processes. The power involved in creation frightens me. I stop before the heat builds. There is so much longing in the artistic process. So many strong feelings that I try to dilute them by only working a little at a time. And just now, my fox traps aren’t in the forest. Just now, with me, it’s the other way around.
My project is to meet the living, growing world. One cannot tell the story of a plant coming to life or a forest squirrel luring a hunter astray without stepping outside the door.
But in the forest, where the trees stand waiting for me to come and speak with them, there are also memories of loneliness. I cannot hug a tree today without also meeting the sad girl also hugging trees. You know, the one who went out in the rain at eleven years old.
So, I do a little more sudoku. Surf some more. And in between, I sleep. In my notebook from the spring course trip, I find the following words: “Love yourself even if you don’t love yourself back.”
None of this would have been possible without my fellow course participants. And Sophie sends me a quote about sleeping:
“Most change happens slowly and in the excellent dark. Most large things are learned while we are busy with sleep. This is your life. You do not need to force it this way or that. There is a source running through you that is wiser than the head.”
(Yrsa Daley-Ward, from THE HOW – Notes on the Great Work of Meeting Yourself)
An inner source.
A wisdom inside me.
I will have to trust it.
(click here to listen to a short version of the whole story)
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