Once Upon a Time...Time, Time, Time.

          This is where I have to introduce myself- I think that’s been the hardest part of starting this whole thing.  As evidenced by my blog name passions which define me are diverse and inexplicably linked- in me.  And anyhow I don’t even know yet which version of me will emerge on this platform.  I suppose I just want to tell a story a two, no explicit catagorization, just some stories that I know-truth or fiction in this case, would be best left as a question of semantics.  Is what I believe the same as what I’ve experienced? And how exactly do I recognize what I know?  Ahhh yes, the truth of this quest is emerging; it is a quest for Truth itself, as is such for all the best people I know…

            8 year old Vanessa says, in Uganda you don’t simply begin a tale with “Once upon a time”, but it is a call and response. The storyteller begins “Once upon a time…” and the listeners respond in chorus “time, time, time”, only then can the story proceed.  It’s quite lyrical actually, especially in the angelic sound of an eight year olds disciplined and earnest chant. It also does wonders for evoking that archetypical image of indigenous ritual, where our ancestors would gather by the fire at night and sing songs to tell stories, and use those stories to pass on messages, messages of Truth.

            Everything about Vanessa is lyrical, not just her voice; her life in the 6 months I’ve known her is the stuff country songstresses dream of.  I am only learning of the 7 ½ years before, in small stories that always begin…but wait! I’m supposed to be introducing myself, hers can wait. And so:

                                    “Once upon a Time…time, time, time…”

            There was a young girl who believed herself a writer, but having comprehended little if anything of the context of her existence, her stories were borrowed fantasies that were high in drama, but went nowhere, and told nothing.  So she fell in line with the chorus and headed to academia. Choosing to embedded herself in the social sciences, she believed , “this is what I need; with this training I am bound to write something important”. She became inevitably disillusioned most assuredly by her own single minded and fantastical ambition.  She threw aside her pen and went back to her motherland- a country she’d never even been born in, but one she aspired to call home. With joy and rapture she proceeded to get her hands dirty, believing it was simply a misallocating of duty, and misuse of weapons, that had early thwarted her still fantastical ambition.  She decided to develop a product using all the rich agriculture bounty that was often neglected, wasted, and overlooked by her contrived countrymen.  This product was not just supposed to be an inspiration for the infinite ways the agribusiness could improve in Uganda, but was also supposed to demonstrate the potential success of a Synergistic, and thus Sustainable, business model: “I will do something important” she proclaimed.  And thus her juice beverage was born…then shelved.  This young girl, turned entrepreneurial woman, found herself to be nothing but a Little Red Hen: “who will make this juice with me?” she naively quipped again and again, and the story never went so far beyond the response “not I, not I, not I…” (though time and again this response was always coupled with the sincere declaration that the Little Red Hen would be very, very rich one day, feasting on such delicious bread).

            I find myself a woman with nothing much beyond the potential I had to begin with, my juice formulas, like all ideas left idle, will surely return to the Matrix from where they came.  But it is true I also have a few more stories than I did before, and this time they are very much embedded in the context of my existence.  And so I raise my pen both the weapon and shield of the Philosopher.  I write now, to remind myself that it was I who came with this Light I eagerly sought to share; the light has dimmed now, but I can find it again; I have a secret compass.

            The trick is to get it all out in words-to get the stories written plainly-poetically or not-and thoroughly.  Because all of that, all of those stories are simply what happened, but in between- if I write it right- in between I may find the meaning-the message still reverberating from the ancestral fire circle and I will know something important.

            So I begin “Once upon a time…”, and hope that there is an answer back, “time, time, time” so that I may proceed with this song of Truth.