Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Wounded Storyteller

Wow! It seemed like this book was filled with nonsense. It took forever to read, or so it seemed. Perhaps all the difficulty was posed by the fact that the author kept referring to others' work in every chapter. It was informative overall and it definetly showed me a perspective of pain that I never would have thought to look at before: how people tell about it.
I suppose that is a very important aspect within individual cultures. How we come to know of the horrors and painful experiances people have all depend on the storyteller and which body they have taken on. No matter what narrative style a storyteller chooses one thing is certain: we seek and expect a return to normalcy...health.
From my personal experiance I know there has been time where I have been the narrator of a chaos story, and pain has limited my choice of words, if any. People couldn't possibly understand. All I know was that I was silently communicating that I would give anything to be back to normal again. All efforts within my body were re-draw and focused at that one ultimate goal. Disease is definetly a reality check in terms of our priorities. But do we know our destinies as narrators of these stories?
This book also has made me realize how many special groups there are for patients coping with sickness and how much they focus on the positive stories of survivors. That is ultimately what our society wants, they want to hear "I'm fine" and move on. But even though our bodies heal, and we grow strong and the broken places, we will never forget where we were once broken.

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