Where does a story come from? There are the sensations of life: the taste of pistachio gelato, a warm breeze, lightning illuminating the sky, a low grumble from thunder some time later. From momentary experiences, these sensations congeal into memories, they grow arms and legs and become the characters, the setting, the conflict, the action, all the other components that combine into a narrative. This transformation happens with intention, as you go over an incident repeatedly in your mind, shaping it into something coherent for another to understand, for you to understand. What happened then? How do I explain this to myself, make it more interesting to tell to others? What does this say about me and the way that I change over time, or stay the same way?
Yet, with enough practice, even the intentional act of transforming memories into stories becomes second nature. After several years of writing weekly, trying to reflect on my days in an interesting enough way that it might be worth reading, I can’t help but look for everything to be turned into material for sharing — if not a larger story for an essay, then a set of jokes to text to all of my friends, to bring up to whoever I see next. It’s addictive, morphing the mundane day-to-day into an attempt to connect with another, to make a laugh or an insight.
Now, I can’t help but try to neatly scrape the edges off of the grime of my life, polishing it into something that fits neatly into a story. Natural phenomena like the heat turn into something more complex. The heat isn’t just 90°F and 50% humidity, it is a character: the oppressive ruler who dictates the behavior of the masses in the city. The heat is a source of conflict, as even the most put-together people begin to melt at the seams, humanity leaking out into the crowds of the subway stations.
The heat the other day colored my every moment as I waited for the C train to come and take me home. I had thought I was clever for gambling on alternate routes from what Google Maps suggested, but I hadn’t really considered that entire lines of the train could simply stop working for a while. With poor wifi connection, all I had in my bag was a stack of printer paper and a pen that I had taken from the office, a makeshift notebook to replace the one that I’d left at my apartment. I scribbled about narrativizing, the heat smothered, and trains of every letter of the alphabet passed me by (A, B, D).
At first, all I could think about was the heat. It made everyone seem more human, in good ways and bad. There was some beauty to the flushed faces, the languor with which everyone moved. And the heat is an accelerant of emotion: a crowd feels much more unbearable, rage intensifies at every slight, desire for anything else strengthens. Was it just a physical phenomenon, like matter? Or was it something else entirely, a setting that influenced the behavior of all the other characters?
An F train passed me by next, adding to the letters that wouldn’t help me get anywhere.
I continued writing. When I let the heat transform into a character or let the realities turn into a story, do I create new emotions? If not, do I not at least shape the ones that I felt in the moment? My rage at my endless waiting comes from this annoying adversary, but at the time it just felt like rage from nowhere. Is the emotion more significant in the moment compared to when it comes in reflection? When I look back at a mundane pizza night on a random Friday with my family in my childhood and am filled with love and longing, how does that compare to the commonplace sort of joy I felt at the time?
What about other cases? As I process everything that happens to me, I add more emotional weight to the mundane, filtering in threads from poetry and media and memes and everything else in my life. A text from a love interest is compared to a poem from Cavafy and emotion expands further than ever before. The stories of my life are adorned with the gorgeous words I adore. Every time I enjoy someone’s company I think of Richie Hofmann’s line, “it is so easy to imagine your absence.” My excitement about anything expands as I connect my life to great poetry or fascinating ideas; I get used to enhancing everything I see with the most bountiful interpretation of what a moment can be.
I craft stories as a way to process my experience and emotions, but as I bring in more influence and more thought, I could be ultra-processing them, injecting them with extraneous meaning, making them more beautiful than ever before. If I didn’t feel so strongly in the moment, are the emotions real or manufactured?
One more train came and went (F), as did another train (D).
Eventually, I gave up on the C and decided to hop on the next train that came by, an A train, with the plan to walk home from a stop 20 minutes away from my apartment, despite the heat. There were no good options, but at least I would be moving. And soon, after what felt like an eternity, I emerged to the street. It was raining. The rain was another source of conflict, another setting, another character. Everyone sheltered under the awnings on the corner of every street, and I stood on the edge, still getting wet, annoyed yet slightly appreciative of the cool wetness mixing with the sweat from the sauna-like subway station. I thought about walking 20 minutes home, I thought about waiting for buses that would take 15 minutes to appear, I thought about calling a car despite the surge pricing.
And as I wiped the rainwater from my glasses, I saw a glimmering respite from the rain, a safe haven from the pains of my journey — a Taco Bell Cantina. From the downpour, I entered the sacred hall, ordered a bean burrito and some water, and sat down, dabbing my face and hair with a wad of napkins. As I ate, as the air conditioning slid over me, the concerns I scribbled down seemed to leave me. The unnoticed antagonist of hunger left the story, along with the heat, as the sun continued to hide behind the clouds. What had felt like an objective exploration into the nature of my story-making and its dangers suddenly felt like the downward spirals of a hungry person, someone lost in the confluence of natural enemies and tiredness.
In the moment of my writing in the subway station, I would’ve told you that I’d reached a place of focus that let me clearly see the ways that my approach to narrativizing had driven me into delusion. But looking back, I see that my hyperthermic and hungry brain sought to find everything wrong with everything. In this state, I acted as if objectivity existed at all, let alone when attempting to understand my own emotions, all while unaware of the enemies in my own story that made all of my interpretations even more subjective.
Yet, I think there’s still value in questioning the nature of these stories, or at least in avoiding them as viewing them as accurate representations of the past. Even as I write the stories of what happens in my life, the storytelling of my life feels closer to an oral tradition. There is no canonical version of these narratives: each retelling shifting slightly, letting the facts bend and morph based on the audience, based on who I am that day, based on how I change over time, what I forget.
Stories let us connect with each other, guide us in how to live, give structure to an incomprehensible world. But they can be let go as easily as they are adopted. I told myself stories about being uncreative and incapable of writing, and now (after seven years of weekly writing) I tell myself opposite stories. So, perhaps a story deludes me into feeling something falsely, perhaps another story drives me to make a life change, perhaps another does nothing at all — these are the risks that I’m willing to take. Narratives are powerful and can change a life, but ultimately, they’re powerless, always able to be overwritten.
We must do what we can to push back against the genocide in Gaza. Consider calling your US representatives to support de-escalation and a ceasefire, donating to Care for Gaza (a grassroots organization delivering food to Palestinians), directly to families or by buying e-SIMs to keep folks connected to their families.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
ALBUM - Poinciana by Ahmad Jamal - one of the best to ever do it
POEM - “Things That Are Rare” by Richie Hofmann - Maybe it is night, we are still handsome. / All the young are. / It is so easy.