STORYTELLER

Welcome to the first podcast version of JUST NOW!

Now you can listen to me read STORYTELLER, one of the two poems in this post, as you read along. Just click the arrow, and if your computer has a speaker, we’ll be on our way.

Of course, you can read just by yourself, like always, if you want.

As always, I love your comments. So, feel free – about the poems, the fancy new technology, or anything you’d like to bring up.

And please, think about sharing JUST NOW with a friend.

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INTRO TO BOTH POEMS IN THIS POST

This new post deals with a realization I’ve come to, again and again through the years – that we are trapped inside our own minds in a way, and therefore inside our own lives. This is not a bad thing. I believe it’s just how we’re made and how we work, and therefore how we see the world working. And, in fact, it is how the world works. Anyway, every time I’m reminded of this, I’m both delighted to have it in my awareness again and disturbed to realize that I had once again allowed it to slip away.  

It seems like it shouldn’t be, but it’s almost always a shock when I realize it and grasp again that I’m always seeing everyone and everything from only my single point of view, from inside my mind.

And it’s a further shock as I try to comprehend the interplay of the multiple points of reference of just the small group of people in just the inner circle of my life – the people I know and care for and interact with regularly, and the intricacy of how we see each other and seem to one another.

And follow this with even a nod at comprehending the incomprehensible multitude of realities and lives and languages and points of reference of all the people in this teeming world. . . each person caught inside their own mind, their own experience, their own explanation of the world and how it works. . .

There’s an almost frightening loneliness to it, and at the same time it’s a condition we all share, and beautifully push against in order to reach one another. And we do reach one another.

It’s a paradox. As I write this I keep flipping back and forth between Duh! – Of course. What did you think? and Ah! This is so profound!

Anyway, I love this idea. This realization. This revelation.

-Bill

STORYTELLER

We speak the world into being what it is.
For us, what it is.
What it is for us each: 
life around us, 
how it works, 
what’s going on,
what people are thinking 
while they’re doing what they’re doing,
why they’re doing it, 
why things happen the way they do.

This is our story of the world we’re telling ourselves
as we’re living through the story that we’re telling 
about the world and the people that we know 
and the people that we don’t know
and why they’re doing what they’re doing.

And all the people in our story are likewise 
telling themselves their story at the same time.
We come in and out of theirs, 
through doors and days, 
like they do ours.

The story of the world we tell ourselves our whole long life 
is not a narrative about a person walking through a world 
and the many things that happen to him or her.

It is a telling moving 
morning to night, day to day, year to year, 
where things happen every minute, 
feelings happen, doing things, making things happen, 
people coming in, going away, feeling hurting, feeling happy, 
having fun, needing, feeling gratitude, helping, feeling love, 
feeling lonely, feeling terror, guilt, hate, fear,
as the events, situations, settings, circumstances appear, 
as we do things, as we don’t, 
as things arise, move on, and new ones come. 
And the story tells and tells.
It is a witnessing and an explanation all at once,
our explanation of everything that happens 
from a single point of view, our point of view, and only ours.

However close we stand to another person in our story, 
no matter how long we’ve known them, no matter what we are doing:
making love, having an argument, looking at a beautiful piece of art in a museum,
telling them our story as it is happening at the moment as clearly, as best we can – 
don’t forget 
that they are hearing our vivid telling of our story as best they can – 
while living 
the vivid telling of their own.

Our stories brought us to this place, together, 
this moment, side by side, as close as we can possibly be. 
But there are still two stories being told, 
about two worlds –
what they are for us each –
our two worlds:
how they work,
what’s going on.
There will never only be
just one.

Bill Jeffers 
2/3/2022

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RECOGNITION

Stopping starting, moving through falling behind
I make my way to the north end of town
through the traffic lights and arrows 
left, right, green, yellow, red-red-red! 

I’m behind the wheel of my big truck, music on the radio, 
making my way through the streets with the river
of all the other asphalt lives flowing around me.
I’m on my errand. I know where I’m going
and when I need to be there. 

But what brings everyone else out here 
in the middle of the afternoon? 
Where are they headed with such evident determination?

I’m watching them while I’m waiting at a light. 
The oncoming traffic flows by. All these people
in their own private, glass steel plastic gasoline 
rooms, one by one, I see them passing by. I realize 

they come from actual lives. 
They aren’t just ornaments in mine. 
This trip a tiny, totally forgettable fragment
of their days, of who they are and what they do. 
Even the ones with the names of what they do 
printed on the sides of their vans as they go by. 
I have no idea. I watch them. I see them even, but
I see them in this one instant of their vast 
and complicated lives. 

I watch their faces gliding by, busy, on their ways
behind the windows of their tiny rooms, 
each one separate, anonymous. 
I don’t know them. But today
in this single moment of their intricate lives
from this small window of my own,
I see them.

Bill Jeffers
1/5/2022