Justine

Objects: Skull, ring, star, emblem of scholar, apple label.

 

To my way of thinking, there is only one colour for a story apple (or a pair of kick-you boots), and that is red. Uncompromising, dangerous, rebellious; the colour of blood and woman and fight and revolution.

The button, like a wheel of fortune: shape and change your fortune as you go by your sharp pin - deliberate, pointed, purposeful. Shape the past, change the order of consequences, move the objects as you build the future.

Open inside, a rainbow; a weaving in and out for objects and stories. The scholar and the apple label held inside a red purse; keep here your collections of objects for your tellings as you need.

The inside? Tucks, folds, pockets and quiet places set against the shout of bold colours. We won't go there: the quiet pages are for the teller to slip between as they refresh the words they'll use.

Don't pay attention to what I write, pay attention to what I say; don't pay attention to what I say, pay attention to how I tell it; pay attention, not to how I say anything, but what I do, as I slip away.

I have to listen carefully to those storytellers. I never know whether they are crafty, slippery souls, not to be trusted, or whether they are truth-tellers in disguise, merchants of honesty. They shift emphasis in a heart beat: listen to this, I'll tell you now, this was the moment: they slip between stories, evading capture of themselves, there and not-there, unwatched and watched as a magician: then you look around and think, when they are gone, they were only the narrator after all; tapping into the stories we already carried inside our own heads; we just didn't know the stories were there until the teller appeared, then disappeared.