On A Single Step

I’m going to tell you a story. Stories are kind of my family business, so it seems only right. This is a tale that isn’t exactly real but it feels it. That, or it doesn’t exactly feel real, but it is. I’ve never been sure.

A long time ago, when gods were vain but they were real, the King of Ithaca fought in a war. It was a fantastic carnival of gore and suffering, of justice absent and mercy-lacking. That deadly, drawn-out, didactic decade of pain and stasis, famed though it may be, is not what our hero is known for.

Our hero fought the ire of divinity, encountered a witch and a Titaness, and escaped foul beasts – the intoxicating Sirens, the less intoxicating Polyphemus, and the definitely-not-intoxicating bloodthirsty cannibals – all which threatened his journey home. That journey itself took another decade and in infamy was named for the hero who survived it – it was named The Odyssey.

I’ve been thinking more and more of those twenty years as I now myself reach that number. I have fought in no war and escaped no foul beasts, but I did manage to survive an uptight British boarding school. I have never been in the lair of the crafty witch Circe, but I’ve met my double-speaking sister on a bad day. I have not fought alongside the likes of Ajax or Achilles, but I have come to know some people who were equally incredible in their own right. I have no one who would wait a quarter of a lifetime to see me. Yet.

If one removes those twenty years it could be said that all Odysseus did was take a single step. Remove my twenty years, and I am nothing. As a storyteller and a story in my own right, perspective can make all the difference.

Curtain.