This post is part 2 of
a larger series. Certain parts of it won’t
make a whole lot of sense unless you have read part 1, which can be found here…
When I
was a kid, there was a Samoan princess who lived in the stars. I don’t remember her name, or any of the
stories, just that basic setting. What I
do remember is the feel of soft, Costco brand sweatpants covering the lap I was
sitting on and the sound of lounge chairs being moved over a rough brick patio.
I remember a warm summer breeze wafting
the scent of gently smoking cigarette butts through the air, and the sight of
stars sparking against the night sky as the stories strolled among them. And I remember the joy of letting those
surroundings soak in while my mind traveled with a princess among islands made
of starlight.
The
stories were told to me by Penny, a friend of my parents. In fact, she was the one who introduced them. I still don’t know if the stories were ones
from her childhood or if they were figments of her imagination that she occasionally
allowed to go wild. Either way, her
stories of the island princess in the stars were my introduction to the act of storytelling.
We went
over to Penny’s house a lot when I was growing up. She lived in the neighborhood between
Idelwild and Chrissy Caughlin Park. She
and her husband would host poker nights all the time. I would go with my parents, sometimes I would
play poker with the adults, other times I would watch The Lion King in the
other room while they played cards; it was then that I learned how to operate a
tv and vcr.
Penny
would make runny baked bbq beans, and serve some store-bought potato salad
along with some French bread. Her
husband would make steaks on the grill out back. If you asked for your steak to be rare, he
would basically pick up a raw steak in some tongs on the right side of the
grill, flip it over as he passed the steak over the heat and plop it down on a
plate on the left side of the grill. If
you asked for your steak well done, you got the exact same treatment. Every steak was rare and bloody, and the
juices mixed with the runny beans to make a soup to be soaked up with the
bread. I hated the food when I was a
kid; now it’s one of my favorite meals.
Penny
loved cats, especially Siamese cats. She
had a few different ones through all the years, though the two that stuck in my
mind the most were Tinker and Stinker.
Tinker was small, devious, and playful while Stinker was larger, fat,
and not overly bright, with eyes that went in every direction except straight
ahead.
Cats were a constant part of
Penny’s life… so were Costco brand sweatpants and shirts. She wore those sweats as often as she could
get away with it. And when you have as
little concern for other people’s opinions as Penny did, you can ALWAYS get
away with wearing sweats. She would wear
some of them frequently enough, especially around the house, that eventually
the thread in them would wear down. I’m
pretty sure there were a few times where the ratio of thread to cat hair had
shifted in favor of the felines.
She would chain smoke while she
obsessively gambled. She loved food that
most other people would avoid (Eggroll King and Gold N’Silver) and she didn’t
exercise. She wasn’t the healthiest
person around, there’s no denying that.
But her mind shined bright and her wit was the sharpest of anyone I’ve
ever known. She was never at a loss for
words, jokes and comebacks were ready on a moment’s notice.
Penny had a sense of self that was
indomitable. She knew exactly who she
was and never seemed to doubt it for a second.
Others opinions held no sway with her unless they were the opinions of her
friends, to whom she was unfailingly loyal.
She was an avid reader, infatuated
with a good mystery. She would read book
after book after book, always trying to stay one step ahead of the characters
and the writer. Likewise she would sit
down with brain-teasers or puzzles, working on them for hours at a time. She would burn through games such as Myst and
Riven in a fraction of the time it would take an average person.
I tell you all of this about Penny
so that you can form a picture in your mind of the stories that she used to
tell me of the Samoan princess that lived among the stars.
A picture in my mind is all that
remains for me as far as the stories are concerned…
A picture of lounge chairs on a
rough brick patio covered in birdseed, below an ocean filled with islands of
starlight far too numerous to count.
A picture of people sitting around
me with their heads tilted back and their eyes fixed on the night sky as a hand
reaches out in front of me, pointing from start to star and weaving a tale more
full and rich than any tapestry.
A picture of a mind shining
brighter than the stars around it, its light shining out through the cracks of
an ordinary life.
That’s the picture that was given
to me as an introduction to the world of stories and storytelling. It’s the picture that taught me that no
matter what may be happening in my day to day life, my imagination is capable
of anything.
Penny
passed away a few years ago from cancer.
She hadn’t told me a story about the princess in the stars for nearly
two decades. Though the details of the
stories have faded, the picture she left me with hasn’t. The lessons derived from that picture haven’t
faded either.
Now the
picture of the porch and the starlight islands is a bit ephemeral and far too complicated
to include in my Life Is Cinema tattoo.
However, these stories, the storyteller, and their impact on my
perception of life, and the stories that it’s made up of need to be included
somehow. So I figure, I’ll keep it
simple and fill the first frame of the film with a penny, a little play on
words for the woman that taught me never to let my imagination whither; the
woman that showed me what storytelling can do for the soul.
