Hold on to What You Know – TinaO

Drivers

Listen to TinaO read this poem here.

Four wheels don’t make a driver

Some of us are gap fillers

Never considering how long it takes to stop before we start

or leaving a space between the cars

or a breath before the accident

–

Drivers read the room

they notice the way the rain hits

the window

It’s the rhythm of our repetition 

and our listening through the weather

that keeps us rooted,

We drive through the exhale we can no longer hear

–

Drivers always take in

what doesn’t move around them

they drive conversation so they don’t sputter and fall  

they grab up all the discomfort 

like doughy circles of bread

squishing them into cubes

between our fingers 

and palms

smaller and smaller

until just dense enough to stomach them

in one 

efficient swallow

–

We drive the impossible 

into the wreckage of exhausted potential 

–

We’re weird like that

Drivers

–

We think anything can be done,

rescued,

revitalized, 

made into something it’s not 

and never has been

–

We tell ourselves 

capacity 

is a moveable thing

and not a boundary 

or a sign of where something ends

where we’re so full we simply cannot take any more in

Drivers look at these lines as cartoons, 

something we can erase and redraw

or pick up and put down wherever we need them to be

–

But drivers don’t read maps this way

on paper

on the road

or in actual life

where breathing back and forth 

can happen,

No,

valleys, cliffs and deserts are not

merely suggestions 

there

We are drivers

and we will drive til it’s done

–

I am a driver

I have driven the things I want into what I want them to be

Til I see a moment like it’s not 

Til it’s better

Because I made it that way

–

I get shit done,

I make up new rules for the road

and I can see in the dark

–

So why?

Why would I stop driving now?

–

Listen to this poem ready by TinaO here.

Story Hit #3 – Hold on to What You Know

(or How Live Your Best Story Came to Be)

From Where We’ve Been: TinaO’s Story Hit’s Compilation

From October 2016 – almost three months post cancer treatment

These vlogs track where we’ve been together over the last seven years. I share them with you to close one story and open another.

This year on December 25th, which is both Christmas Day and my 50th Birthday, I am stepping into a new story…and I know what I know what I know about how stories work:

Stories won’t let go until they’ve been fully heard.

This is release #3 of sixteen weeks of Story Hits (vlog) from as far back as 2013. Some are my favourites, some are yours. If you missed week #1 and #2 and want  to start from the beginning, you can start here with: Out of the Water. 

I will be writing more about these moments in both my upcoming book: STORY STONES (coming fall 2021, and in my one woman show: O MY GOD (touring spring 2021).

On my 50th Birthday, if you’re on my VIP list, I’ll be sending you 50 Days of Christmas Story Gifts from Dec. 25th to February 12th. If you want some story goodness filled with sneak peeks into the creation and rehearsal process, plus be able to pre-order the book, and order tickets to the show, click here and the let the gifting begin! (You’ll get a bunch of cool story right away).

Thank you for listening.

xT