Boating In The

Territory

  by Bonzai Yak

  112 pages

Chapter 6: Territory Stories (part b)

 

Now people you meet in the everyday world say they create or that other guys do. Because they have maps from the everyday world they claim things themselves and stop what they start right away at the start. Not a good tactic at all. As soon as you claim to create something new you forget all about it. Remembering is quite different than that, when you remember you leave a hole in the work that you do and you wait for a while to remember some more. To really remember something fully takes a long time. Initially you only just see a bit of the whole that you know it must be. But if you keep an empty place in your remembering, you can go through the hole to other levels and eventually see the whole shape.

Remembering is a natural thing, we do it spontaneously all the time, but it's hard to hold on in an empty way to what we begin to remember. We tend to let go of things that we know and go on to find them all over again in a different way. That's where Territory stories come in. They're useful ways to remind ourselves of things we've remembered already. If you begin to remember something new and make a story to hold the whole, what you remember will stay with you in a empty way and you can come back to it time and again to remember some more.

Territory stories are an odd sort of fish, they flop on your plate and they squirm on your dish. You might wish you'd never begun one at all, they go on and on and don't seem to stop which is more or less true if you try to approach them linearly which I don't recommend cause they never do end unless you jump to another level and even then you must jump again. They're kind of like a shaggy dog story without the dog, just the shag.

So I'm going to tell you a few stories now, some small ones first, then the middle- sized size, then a couple of whoppers to top it all off. Now you might suspect there are lies involved, but a good lie implies where the truth resides. And I have a feeling you realize that wrong and right don't quite apply in a Territory story. If you act as if you believe they are true, these stories might open some doors for you and close off others you've left ajar in an accidental way.

Passports. You'll need one. Not the sort that the map makers make. You want the kind that you issue to yourself. Especially at first you're bound to think that you need permission to enter into the Territory. A passport will be a very good way to take that responsibility on yourself. Make a good one, give yourself permission thoroughly to do what you do when you do what you want. The passport you make can be just as much like the everyday kind as you want. But why not a poem or perhaps a song, a drawing or two or the lace from your shoe. A dance is a chance you might like to take and you won't be far wrong if the Customs Guy likes the look of your feet. And you can count on meeting the Customs Guy, he's a popular role and he'll turn up for sure when you least expect him to check out the passport you carry.

You see how a Territory story works? This permission we need to do what we want is one of the things that is hardest to get, especially from yourself. Now you and me, we could talk all about it, examine the concept from all of its sides and discuss it until we got so disgusted we decide to drop the whole thing. Never would get to the heart of the how or the where of the why that stops us somehow from being in the Territory. But if you work with the passport story and make yourself one you can carry along, you'll find out a lot from the shape that it takes and the way it has to be used. It will give a chance for your hands to remember, your voice and your body will be involved too. And when you meet the Customs Guy, you'll have a chance to act it all out and play with the way that you need to be. Passports give you the opportunity to practice at being free.

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