Once upon a time...

Most stories begin in dark, stormy nights. A cliche. The truth is it starts way before that. We just tend to be aware of the dark, stormy nights, when wicked deeds are done, when the masked man kills his hapless victims, the girl runs away, the 'unsuspecting' boyfriend finds his girl in bed with another. But all that is just the now. It's the events before that make a story. And what happens after. The present is just drama, it doesn't make sense, it never does. Fairy-tales never make sense (towards the end anyway). There IS no 'tale' in a sentence "And they lived happily ever after.", more so, the words "lived", "happily", "after". How did they "live"? Happily. How did they live "happily"? How did they make it happily to "after"? What in the world is "after"?

Too many questions there. But does it matter? It is true, that the incomplete story, the ones with all the questions, the gaps and all that unresolved desire, non-action, and so on, make a hard-sell. Ask the Brothers Grimm. Or consider Scheherazade spinning a yarn the best way she knows how, just enough to pique the interest, to extend her life for another day. A good story is one that we tell as if our lives depend on it. Because it does.

Reality, our daily lives are stories, most of the time, bad ones. It is either too mundane and hardly worth killing a tree for, or so full of drama that would make Shakespeare blush to the roots of his bald head. But it is the possibilities of what could've happened that makes a good story. If I had gone for my walk, what would have been the day like, how would it have ended, what would I have begun (instead of sitting here writing on this blank page)? The alternate realities that make up the fabric of our lies that are our stories. More fun. More happiness. More sadness. Suicide. Murder. Lust. More feeling.

If Judas hadn't killed himself, he could've written a book with a zillion possibilities - what if he hadn't betrayed his mentor, had not taken the twenty pieces of silver, what if he invested it instead of throwing it away, what if he planned a rescue mission,...what if he hadn't crossed paths with Jesus after all? Different endings. They all may not be a good read, but there are stories in there.

We all dream of the path not taken, some more often than others. The kind of stories we dream or have night terrors over depends on the kind of things we think are missing in our lives. The search, the quest, the need for horror, mystery, light and darkness. Everything and nothing. What we are doing is trying to look at the unknown. And like children, beg for more "And then what happens?" Because something has to happen, even if it is just the skies turning from white hot to orange. It always is the best of times, and the worst of times.

And whatever be the plot of the stories we write, there are always happy endings. All we need to know is when to finish the story.