The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

Why was it that women could never work hard enough to quiet their nagging fear that they were not enough? That they were falling behind? That they could and should be better? No wonder they wanted simple rules to govern the way T-shirts should be folded, children raised, careers managed, lives lived. They needed to believe there was a right way and a wrong way—there had to be! Because if there was a right way, then perhaps they could find it, and if they found it and learned the rules, then all the pieces of their lives would fall into place and they would be happy. Such delusion.

She opened the clarinet case and carefully assembled the instrument. “It’s sad,” she said, running her finger down its shiny body. What my mom meant was that she was sad—and this was one of those times when words means something different from what you want them to mean, but what they mean is more true than you know. “Yes,” I said, looking at Dad’s clarinet, sitting awkwardly in her hands. “It is sad. It’s very sad.”

“God is a story,” he said. “I believe in stories, and God knows this. Stories are real, my boy. They matter. If you lose your belief in your story, you vill lose yourself.”

‘Ze truth about stories is that is all we are.’ A famous Cherokee writer named Thomas King once said this. We are ze stories we tell ourselves, Benny-boy. We meck ourselves up. We meck each other up, too.”