Tell me a story

Story telling is an art-whether it’s the sort of tale you tell your wife when you come creeping in the morning, or the kind that puts junior to sleep at night. If you can spin a yarn that hold the attention of your audience , regardless of age and bent of mind, you may count yourself among the chosen few.

Those parents who are endowed with the art of telling enthralling tales to their children, find it an invaluable sugarcoating with pleasant tasks, such as putting junior to bed or washing his hair. And telling the story provides an even stronger link between parents and child than just reading a story can forge.

The habit of story-telling, in particular has grown into a nightly bed-time custom. Once young sunny  is tucked in, his father stretches out on the bed beside him, turns out the light, and out of thin air concocts his story about the imaginary people he has created for his child’s benefit.

Telling a story also gives the father a chance to impart some actual knowledge ,as well as nonsense. And, above all, the father feels that his innocent tales are a relief from the horror tales in comics, and, actually, even in some of our well known fairy tales.

Story-telling is an old art. In ancient times we find the Greeks and Romans with their great amphitheaters. At these large gatherings were professional story-tellers, whose words were more vividly impressed upon the minds of the listeners by means of actors in pantomime.

“When reading a story, you are tied down to the author’s words and thus are attempting to assume his personality. You are really not ‘feeling’ the story. You are unable to watch the facial expressions of the audience”.

By telling the story you can adapt the same story to many different types of audience and to suit their moods. You have the writer’s thought and ideas in your mind, but you are able to give the author’s main ideas plus convey in part something of your own personality.

There are a few little ticks of technique that a good story- teller uses whether consciously or unconsciously. A pause, judiciously employed, is one of the most important .It gives the mind time to grasp a new idea, allows the  listener to assimilate what has gone before, gives emphasis and arouses suspense.

Gestures are good , but be careful not to overdo it. Mimicry, if you are capable of it ,is very good especially with younger children. To secure the attention of your audience ,use a striking beginning, which will enlist their interest right from the start.

Stories have both educational and emotional value. Stories are childhood’s form of expressions and it is through stories that the child’s mind is developed.

Stories give a child a better insight into human emotion. Stories stimulate and direct literary pursuits. A good instance of their emotional value is the development of sympathy towards animals. Stories may also be used to encourage respect for, and care of, elderly people.

Precocity and Genius

Genius is often precocious. Precocious originality is one of the characteristics of genius, many philosophers affirm that genius consists in an exaggerated development of one faculty at the expense of others.

Dante, when nine years old, wrote a sonnet to Beatrice, Tasso wrote verses at Ten. Pascal and Comte were great thinkers at the age of 13,Fornier at 15,Niebubr at seven. Goethe wrote a story in seven languages when was only at ten.

Victor Hugo composed at 15.Moore translated Anacreon at 13.Mayerbeer,at 5,played on the piano.

Delay in the development of genius may be explained by the absence of circumstances favourable to its bloosming, and by the ignorance of teachers and parents who see mental obtuisity, even idiocy, where there is only the distraction of genius.

Many children who became great men have been regarded at school as bad, but their intelligence soon manifested itself. Gustav Flaubert was the very opposite of a phenomenal child. It was with extreme difficulty that he succeeded in learning to read.

Many eminent men who were acclaimed in later life for their genius were backward in their scholastic career. Einstein himself was considered a poor student in school and failed in the entrance examination for the polytechnicum in Zurich. 

Maharshi  Aurobindo,the spiritual giant could not speak fluent English at the age of 12.

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. Where education ends, genius often begins. Gray was asked if he recollected when he first felt that the strong predilection to poetry. He replied that “he believed it was when he began to read Virgil for his own amusement and not in school hours as a task”.

Nevertheless, going through the life span of many eminent persons, who influenced the world, it was rightly said that that the child is the father of man, nothing could be truer than in the case of the genius.

My Longings

I write my longings

on the river every noon

When I bathe

And they snake to the sea

only to be tossed about

and broken by

the shattering waves

Every morning as I stroll

I write my longings

on the clear blue of the sky

but soon the blanket of darkness

hides them

And with the break of dawn

the letters melt and drip down

in the sun’s heat

But I don’t write my longings

on the walls of the mind

in the night

in a moment’s drama of dreams

enacted on the mind’s walls

I see my fulfillments

all celebrities

of a king

attend on me.

Long spring is over

Yes, summer has come without

The apology of a tomorrow

The summer has torn out

The remnants of my mind.

Bitter youth is

The bitterest wine ever

How can I forget that

The long spring is over?

I had named you spring and

Serenity

Like a new faith you had come and

Eased

The old bitterness out of me.

In my tomorrows I had planned

A little bit of you

In my yesterdays I had hoped

To drape a veil over

The sadness of youth in exile.

When the birds wing joyfully across

The skies

And trees move their leaves

To the rhythm of the breeze

And children go out to play early

Most afternoons

I will remember

I will remember that

The long spring is over

And you won’t be here to share

another

With me.