Here I am sitting at my messy little desk, in my bedroom in Brooklyn. It’s a warm day, but not as hot as it has been. The sun has passed behind the buildings so it’s that late afternoon light, a little gray, but peaceful, and in the distance I can hear lazy late Saturday afternoon sounds – my neighbor just sneezed! Some plates are being stacked, a door shuts. It is very peaceful here, and I am sitting and writing because there is a different sort of peace inside me. An excited peace, if you know what I mean, because I have just been somewhere amazing.
My friend Stacy asked me to go and be a guest speaker at a summer writing workshop she’s running for the PEN Foundation. I said yes, because she’s my friend, and because I know she does good work so I’m sure whatever she’s asking me to be part of is noble, and because, heck, if there’s one thing I can do, it’s talk. But I didn’t really understand what it was about.
This is why at noon today I was rushing down the street wearing a proper dress and proper shoes, dragging my dogs home to throw them in the door, and then flinging myself onto the (stinking hot) subway platform. Why I was wandering down Broadway with a crumpled piece of paper with directions in my hand (Stacy must have taped the paper to the inside of my gate in the middle of the night, in a plastic bag so the rain wouldn’t ruin them. I found it in the morning, and laughed out loud: You’ve got mail!). Why I signed in at the front desk of the sort of marble building that usually makes me nervous, and took the elevator up to the third floor.
Inside Suite 303, the workshop had already started. Kay, the intern, brought me water, and explained kindly when I asked “Er, what exactly is this class, and, um, what would you like me to talk about?” that this was a writing workshop for talented young writers who go to the sorts of schools that probably wouldn’t normally provide them with this kind of experience. That these were young people for whom “literature” (and more importantly: the world of books) might not be a normal part of their everyday lives. It would be nice if I could talk about the bookstore that I own, why I’ve chosen it as my life, what it’s like there, what it costs and what it gives. Basically (again, if I understood it correctly), make this place that they’ve never been or seen, or maybe even heard of, real.
Okay, I thought. I can do that.
I’ll talk about where I came from, how I ended up here. I’ll show them the pictures of the store which I brought on my laptop – and the pictures will naturally lead to the stories that are attached to all the objects in the store – that’ll take a while – and then, once they can picture and imagine the place, I can talk just a little about why and how books, which are really stories, lead naturally to the existence of this funny little world, this bizarre, perfectly imperfect little utopia, which is my bookstore.
So I start talking. I am the child of two academics, English professors. I grew up in the world of books, of stories, so it is home to me. I talk about how I found myself, accidentally in the bookstore, when I was 24 years old, and stayed. I show the pictures, and talk and talk and talk. I am telling stories. And they are listening to me, and laughing, and . . . . something amazing happens. I tell them, early on, how sometimes, at night, I find myself working late, and I look up, see the warm light, the richness of the red carpet, and all around me on the walls, the 15,000 books that live there. They are around every corner, covering every available vertical and horizontal space – and I think: My god. I am in Aladdin’s cave. I am in a treasure cave. There are 15,000 stories around me – all of mankind, all of history, hope, dreams, passion, love – life. This is rich. I am rich.
In telling them, I am suddenly filled with the wonder of this world I have lived in, and I look at them, these beautiful young people, and I think I see the wonder in them, too. The joy. They are listening.
We live in a world of stories! Amazing! And I start talking more. I tell them story after story about what stories mean to me: That they let me live inside of other people, that they let me understand other people. That once I’ve read a story about someone and understood them, I can never hate or be unkind to them again. That this is why it is so important that people tell their stories. And why it’s so important that people read them. Why books matter. I am dizzy suddenly. I can see it, you see. If we could all speak, and all listen, all understand and know each other – Imagine. And why not? And this is how we do it. We tell each other our stories.
I find myself telling them that it is stories which allow me to be brave: When faced with a situation I don’t know how to negotiate, when I am frightened, I ask myself: If this were a story, how would I want it to go? Who would I want to be in the story? And then I know what I have to do. It is stories which have taught me how to at least want to be heroic.
But this isn’t all: I find myself telling them that stories don’t just make you empathetic, they don’t just allow you be a better person. Suddenly, I find that I am saying: Stories are even more than that. Stories are knowledge, and knowledge is strength. I am saying: For example, if you are faced with a situation of conflict, and you can imagine being the other person, can understand what makes them tick: You win. You will be able to run rings around them, particularly if they don’t understand you.
I find myself telling them about Elisabeth, who said to me on the ferry to Trieste: “A Wish is a Decision.” I tell them that they have helped me understand this, because a wish is of course a story we tell ourselves about the future, a story we hope will come true. And a story, you see, is a powerful thing. Telling a story, a good story (I mean a strong, true, plausible story) about something is a way of proving that it could exist. And if it could exist, it can. And if you want it, it will.
I am sitting here, at my small messy desk, in my bedroom in Brooklyn, and it is very peaceful, and I am very excited. From the outside, I am just a woman sitting at a desk, but I am excited. The world around me seems very rich, and very magical, and very . . . . possible.
Those beautiful, brave young people. I think they gave me a great gift today. I know they did. They listened to me, as I told my story. I look around at each of them, in memory now, unique and lovely, and I am so excited. Because they have stories. They are learning to tell them. They will tell them.
Please, God, let them tell their stories? I am so eager to hear them. I want, you see, to know them.
