To Give Your Brain Credit

"It was the biggest cereal-eating contest of the year in Skiddlyville.  The whole town gathered to the square, where glass bowls had been placed along tables covered in white tablecloths.  The sunlight shone through the bowls and reflected on the tablecloths and sidewalks, covering the town in vibrant lights.  But there was a problem.  No one had noticed, but they soon would, that resting on each of the tables was cereal, beautiful bowls and spoons, and no milk.  No rich, creamy milk, milked from the town cows.  And where there was no milk, there was to be no cereal-eating contest."

by Michael Donovan, found on flickr

So I'm beginning this story, trying to weave it into something melodic and capturing, when my niece E.'s friend G. calls from across the street, and E. leaves the table to go play.  As E. is, or was, my audience, I am left at the table with the beginning strands of a story and no one to listen to them.

I love story-telling.  Often, I feel very unprepared in situations that call for oral story-telling, but inevitably, when I've declined the invitation to share my story, I feel like I've missed out on something.  I love the idea of weaving a story, of keeping someone interested just by what I can create, of worrying less about grammar and more about plot.  

the Awesome Brother P.

My brother P. is a great story-teller.  We had a story-telling night a couple days ago at the dinner table, when E. and P. traded off telling stories, using the characters the other person had already decided on.  P. told stories that made sense, that had direction and intrigue, and that were spun with a little bit of magic.  I sat, brain feeling empty, trying to imagine a satisfying ending to the story being told.  E. was a character in P.'s story, and my nephew A. was too.  They had super-powers, and saved a reasonable number of people from a flood in Iowa.

So I was left at the table the morning after, when E. went to play with G., feeling thwarted in my attempt to contribute to our story-telling moment.  The next morning, I told siblings A. and P. of the fantastical dream I had had that night, both scary and beautiful.  But it didn't feel like that dream, that story, came from me.  

I wonder if that story was mine.  I don't think it's plagiarism to use the stories we find in dreams; it's not as if anyone else can claim them.  But can we really say that the stories our brains create while we sleep, perhaps a folding together of the experiences and questions we have, are stories we would have created while awake?  (My lovely sister S. wrote about a similar experience with her brain; you can follow this link to read it).

Sometimes, I don't want to take credit for the stories my brain produces.  I think, "What the heck are you trying to do to me?" when it comes up with something disturbing, or off-centering, and it takes me a couple of hours to recover after I've woken up.  Other times, I think, "Thank goodness for this brain."

Like the time I had a dream that I was with all my nieces and nephews, all under the age of fourteen at the time.  We were in a white house full of light and had hundreds of little glass jars of hundreds of colors of paint.  We painted all over, even the white in between the steps on the wooden stairs, in colored stripes.

not this fancy-looking, though, but nice

I'd like to take credit for that one, Brain.