Now what is a blessing and what is a dream,
Caught between portraits and none’s what it seems.
And why is it people expect there’s a change,
When I feel I’m a part of something I can’t see.
I feel the same… .

Now I wasn’t looking for heaven or hell,
Just someone to listen to stories I tell.

Stories I Tell
Toad the Wet Sprocket

Writing is communicating and as such, it is alive. The story is a living organism and it is life itself, for what would our lives be without it.

Writing is sharing — it is participating. The story exist before it is even written. It is a dance and the writer needs a partner in the dance — that partner is the reader.

Reading is a passive activity in which the reader is pulled in to witness all that the story offers. The reader participates, but without any will or ability to influence or change the story. The reader can be gently guided or thrown about like a leaf in a storm.

Readers do not necessarily write, but writers do read simply by necessity. This is a must — it is axiomatic. However, every reader has the potential to be a writer if only for the love of the story.

When a story is being written, the writer falls into the story, sucked-in  by that which is experiencing its own becoming. When a reader reads this story, s/he also is sucked-in — sucked into that place where the writer remains long after the story is done. The reader and writer become one in this reality, fused together in this dance and partnership. Everything blurs together where there is no difference between the reader, writer, or story. All our realities collapse into the story, this story which pre-existed both the reader and the writer, and this story which pre-existed even itself.

Words will come and words will go, passing into the minds and hearts of both partners in the dance of story-telling, but the story lives on, for there was never a time it was not. The story will never experience birth or death, for it is eternal. Our stories will travel the worlds into far-off lands long after we are gone, and because we are one with these stories, we will also travel. We will follow that story unto an end that will never come, and into the web spun from gossomer thread in the pattern of the universe itself.