The Stories We Tell
My mind wanders, it follows wisps of thought down strange and wandering paths.
It caught my eye. Robin’s egg blue, bright amid the winter dull grass. A book, open. Cover up, pages down soaking up yesterday’s rain. A textbook, Ornamental Horticulture. The “used” stamp on its spine hinting at its past. What happened, I wondered? To whom did this book belong? How did it end up in the grass on this particular morning? How long had it lain there? No more than twenty-four hours since it hadn’t been there the morning before.
Thoughts of the book’s owner drifted through my mind and by the time I finished my walk I had imagined their life and what led up to the book landing in the grass. Life is like that. We spend our time making up stories. Stories about others, about ourselves. We fill in the blanks with conjecture. We infer meaning, impute causation where there is none.
Archeology and history are largely conjecture. Archeology, especially archeology of cultures with no written record is all conjecture. The reality suggested bears more resemblance to the mind of the archeologist than to an actual reality. Find a female figurine? It must be a fertility symbol. Find someone identified as male buried with projectiles? Must be a warrior. Find someone identified as female buried with projectiles? Must be the wife of a warrior, or perhaps a queen, buy certainly not a warrior ( with few exceptions that prove the “rule”). Stories, some supported with more evidence than others, but still stories. Anthropologists are often guilty of the same. In foraging cultures, what used to be called hunting and gathering cultures, more importance was given to hunting, because it was the work of men. However, the work of gathering, the work of women provided more of the day-to-day nutrition. But, because women’s work was seen as less valuable, it wasn’t seen as important. This was not based on the beliefs of the cultures being studied, but on the beliefs of the anthropologists.
The same is true of history. History is largely the story of big moments and the story of victors, because the vanquished don’t get the chance to tell their stories. They are assimilated, killed off, subsumed into the culture of the victors. In the rare instances the vanquished do get to tell their stories, those stories seen as subversive, counter-cultural, dangerous.
As humans we seem to be drawn to the big moment. The dailiness of life is boring, mundane, not worthy of mention. Even psychics, channelers and mediums fall prey to this. I’ve never heard of a channeler who just channels some regular person, it’s always a prophet or a sage. No one ever channels Bob the plumber. I’ve had several readings by psychics all of whom told me I was an “old soul” and all of whom indicated I came from royalty; an Egyptian princess, a Nubian queen, A Viking Queen.
The truth is life IS what happens in the small moments. Drinking a cup of coffee, reading the paper, answering an e-mail, pulling the covers back, brushing your teeth, staring into the refrigerator. This is the stuff of life. How much of that can you tell from a book left in the wet grass in the park, from a projectile point buried with a body, from a fragment of leather? What story would your belongings tell if someone were to sift through them? Who would you be to an historian, an archeologist? How are the stories you tell about yourself and about others shaped and limited by a cultural script? Things to ponder on a gloomy Monday.
