The title is a nod to the historical woman, Jezebel, her story, and an acknowledgment of her story’s multi-layered retellings across centuries.
Why do we still tell her story? Why are we still reading “The Odyssey” and analyzing the relationship of Penelope and Odysseus? Why do we study literature, both ancient, current, and everything in between? Why do we fight wars over these interpretations? We focus on dogma, rather than the glorious fact that every world mythology shares countless similarities—flood stories are a good example. What does it mean, that fundamentally, our stories share the same threads?
What of ourselves, can we see in Zeus, Shiva, Beowulf, King Arthur, Cleopatra… Jezebel?
We tell our lives into being.
Our lives are a series of actions and reactions, but it’s the story that gives it life.
When I asked my beloved brother, Daniel, his insight, he said:
“I think it is so important to tell our stories and the stories that have been told to us, passed down to provide us insight and knowledge. I think that they are passed down not because they are unique but because they are universal. The people to whom they happened were unique yet part of the same connection that makes us human.
I think we read and tell stories because they provide a catalyst for connection and a good vantage point to see what cause-and-effect create. History repeats itself.”
My story is, like everyone’s, a series of joys, lessons, Sisyphean obstacles, and constantly evolving. I am my own unique self, and history repeating.
I live in a 100 year old cabin—one more life playing out within these solid cedar walls.
Deep, thick, Lake Superior-side forests surround me. Miles of almost uninhabited wilderness encompass my 40 acres and river frontage.
I’m thirty-two years old and live alone here—solo, but for puppy, geriatric cat, and all the layered perspective, experience, and choices that brought me to this place.
I read otter, marten, mink, bobcat, coyote, moose tracks, in mud and snow. Taste rose petals. Lay, naked in sun-warmed river, buzzed by iridescent damsel flies. Apple orchard flanked, strong-walled, square-log sanctuary cradles me. Drift into sleep on the sounds of barred owl, woodcock, and laughing river. Cook on a two-burner propane stove, food nurtured in home-soil. Step, carefully, through house foundation, over fence posts, across stone walls—reminders other lives existed here. Before me. Others stories of love, loss, joy, and struggle.
Perhaps my experiences can offer you something:
Perspective, inspiration, amusement, solace, ideas/recipes, or at the very least, remind you struggle and joy are universal—the connecting point, in every story.
