Listen to Jim’s youtube storytelling:

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Life, actually…

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NEVERENDING STORIES BEGIN WHEREVER YOU ARE

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My beat-up old leather wallet bulges with everything but money.

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So why do I carry this musty time capsule around each day?

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I can’t let go of it because contained within are dozens of notes and notations…notes and notations I do not wish to toss. Notes and notations I never wish to forget.

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Here’s one folded sheet of browning paper. And I quote…

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Sometimes, great literature, inspiring literature, is literature that has never been read by anyone but its author.

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For instance, if you write in your diary or journal and no one else ever reads it, does it have any significance at all? It is that old tree-falling-in-the-forest question–does the falling tree make a noise if nobody is there to hear it?

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At last, that age-old question will be answered right here, right now! For some of the greatest passages in the history of storytelling will never be heard or read by you or me–and they will still be great passages.

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Here are three true and honest passages. Each was written long ago through the eyes of an eleven-year-old. Can you tell me which were composed by now-famous writers? Can you tell me which was written by a young girl in an unpublished—till now—un-read diary?

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Here goes:

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PASSAGE #1: “I lay in my bed and the town slept around me and the ravine was dark and the lake was moving quietly on its shore and everyone, my family, my friends, the old people and the young, slept on one street or another, in one house or another, or slept in the far country churchyards. I shut my eyes…”

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PASSAGE #2; “And then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

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PASSAGE #3: “I got up at 5:15, ate breakfast, then went to Philadelphia all day. We went with Rev. Ammons, but we were in Paul Dean’s machine. We saw some interesting sights, and we saw the zoo. I had an ice cream cone and some candy and a pin of Betsy Ross’s house, and a picture of Jesus. And then we came home and I went to bed.”

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These are excerpts from three paragraphs of great writing, all told through the eyes of children. One passage is taken from a discarded diary I found at a flea market. The others are from works by renowned writers.

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Perhaps they all were first conceived on scraps of wallet-paper, then later saved from perdition. Now all three are published and available to the world.

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Now it is time for you to issue forth your own diary entries. As you compose them, do not judge them. Simply hold on to them for a few years, then re-visit. You may be astonished at their simple beauty, their simple power.

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If curiosity keeps tapping on the windowpane of your imagination, just drop me a note and I will identify the three writers, the writers whose works remain timeless and forever pure

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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