The poet Muriel Rukeyser once explained that the universe is made up of stories, not atoms. I believe her for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that each atom is a universe unto itself. Each with its own story.
If the universe is made up of stories, then our world is no different. Its own atoms endlessly telling their own stories. Each one as urgently as if it had never been told. Even if no one is listening.
Because no story is ever told in vain. Every word we utter changes the world. One small word whispered into a night sky while lying in a field of stars and staring up into eternity changes forever the landscape into which it ascends.
Forever and ever. Every word. Every moment. Every day. From seven million mouths and growing. And there is nothing more real than this. Nothing.
Every single word is powered by light and matter, born of will, and infused with all the sound and fury of universes colliding in space. Every single word. String them together and it is difficult to comprehend what you have unleashed.
As the poet Joy Harjo once said, you who thought you could say nothing, write poetry. Yes, you. Your words are poetry whether you believe it or not. Whether you understand it or not.
The world is made up of stories. And stories are made up of voices. Your voice and mine. And billions of other peoples' voices we don't know and will never meet. We are all creating the world together.
And that seems like a pretty important task. One that we ought to maybe pay greater attention to than we do.
Those of us who regularly sit down to channel words understand the importance of them. But even we fuck it up when it comes to the use of them in our daily lives.
We curse in traffic. We yell at our kids. We tell half-truths and whole lies. We wallow in self-pity. We disparage our neighbors. We rage against the powers that be. We utter whole paragraphs of disbelief and chapter upon chapter of despair.
What other world could we live in than this one, then. With all our rage and our woes, our clever deceit and our self-fulfilling strife, the volumes of chaos that we utter every day.
You heard me right. You and I are responsible for this madness.
And we are also responsible for every beautiful thing that has ever come to be. You and me. Us. We are one in this. Co-creators of the common ecstasy of life, the universe, and everything.
And that everything includes love. Because of course it does. Because love is the source of everything, the DNA of the Universe. The building blocks of life.
Remember:
love is a word.
love is the word.
love writes its own story.
love writes you in.
from words: study 8,
Waking Up at Rembrandt's
Once you are in, once you have taken on this breath, as Harjo puts it, that’s it, the story has begun. And there's no getting off the page. We are at work building the new world, as fast as our words can carry us.
It is time to invite the world out for coffee and a new conversation. Let's pretend we don't know each other. Let's ask new questions. Let's put down our phones. Let's take good notes.
In crafting a poem for a new world, we must learn when to speak and when to be silent. Until we have reset the rhythmic pattern and flow of the universe. Until our stories have filled it to the brim with the beauty of living these lives of light and clay.
The world is made up of stories. And stories are made up of voices.
Join me. Let's build the new world.
Lovely Tommy.