My Story

One of the first "classwork" exercises we did in the first lesson of the Adaptations, Theatre and Culture course last week was to work in pairs, with one team member telling (and then re-telling) a story about herself, and the other just listened and later compared the two versions told. A couple of classmates, who did the listening, got the chance to interpret the stories they heard in their own words/actions.

In my pair, I was agreed to be the "speaker". It wasn't until then that I realized it was actually not easy to be able to come up with a story about myself all of a sudden - a story that is worth telling, in which I have learnt something from it (and hopefully the listeners would learn something from it too). Suddenly my mind was filled up with all sorts of vignettes - memorable fragments that have left a mark in my life, such as...

the child assessment test that I, aged 2 1/2, took - the dawning of my free will;
a slammed door;
a particular walk in the park;
being alone, devouring orange in a little house bathed in late afternoon Aussie sun;
a merciless but purifying rainstorm in the floating city

They can hardly be qualified as stories on their own. They are in no way epics, and may not even be moral tales. But together, each having its own unique place, these vignettes make up what is essentially me - my memory, my consciousness of this world.

Still...

From now on, I should spare more thoughts on collecting, forming and editing my own stories. Who knows... They may probably come in handy some day. Some day soon.