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Story, Stories, Superfictions
We are born into story. From the moment we dive headfirst into the world we are anointed with a name, told that we are a son, daughter, sister, cousin, grandchild, here’s your bed, here’s your room, this your house. You are part of a family, home, building, street, camp, neighborhood, town, city, metropolis, state, region, country, homeland, continent, on a planet circling a sun that swirls through a sprawling Universe.
We are given the names of things and told if they are good or bad. We start naming other things to identify them. We categorize and place everything into groups. We build our world until it becomes everything around us, surrounded by everything that is not. We identify things because until they are given a name, they are meaningless. Rosoideae.
Everything that we know begins with a name, followed by a story. This is not just a rock. It is a particular kind of rock. It is an agate. It is a general name for microcrystalline quartz and moganite mineraloid (thanks for the names, Google). It is a moon rock. It is the rock that David used to kill Goliath. It is the rock of ages. (In 1923, Chicago Tribune newspaper correspondents all over the world were asked to send rocks from the places they were reporting from — the rocks they sent were embedded into the wall of the Chicago Tribune building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Today you can see carved stones…
