The Storyteller

a short story about work & love

Yesterday was the first sunny day in weeks. I sat on my pedicab on the corner of Royal and St. Anne, where the best clarinetist in New Orleans plays from late morning ‘til mid afternoon, raising her instrument to the sky with unmistakable style, and waited for a customer that was slow to come.

After about 20 minutes of slumping in the backseat of my bike, a girl with a sign that read “Stories” sharpied on a cardboard box floated through the crowd and whispered something in my ear.

“I’m working too,” I replied instinctively, even though I couldn’t understand her.

Over the years, I’ve grown immune to French Quarter street hustlers and had no desire to spend money on my shift, especially since I hadn’t made any yet. Still, I was intrigued.

There are magicians, energy readers, psychics, people painted silver and gold, human gorillas, crossdressers, topless women, mimes, tarot card readers, a motherfucker that dresses up like Dark Vader and dances to EDM music, poets for hire, Voodoo queens, Mardi Gras Indians, and everything from gutter punks to local drunks trying to hustle a dollar in the Quarter. But I’ve never seen a girl telling stories.

“I don’t want your dollar,” she replied. “I think I have a story here. A story that will change our lives.”

Without waiting for a reply she leaned into the back of my seat with her eyes in mine and opened a small leather-bound book. She held it in my lap and I could see the words “The Prophet” written in little black letters at the top of the page.

“The Prophet…Kahlil Gibran?”

“Yes,” she said.

After flipping tiny pages to find our story she again looked into my eyes and with her right arm resting on my thigh, she began to read in a soft and clear voice. She read slowly, rhythmically, and every line or so paused to look into my eyes, reciting the words from heart when she did, like a veteran poet reading a seasoned poem he still believes in before an audience of friends.

Her eyes were gray like paper clouds shined through with sun. Her skin was soft and pale, and on this sunny but chilly day in New Orleans her cheeks were flushed red and purple like the leaves of a blueberry tree.

Then a ploughman said, “Speak to us of Work.”

And he answered, saying:

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.”

She was either high on acid afloat in alternative dimensions of pure consciousness and presence, or she believed every word she uttered was true. But more than true. She read as though each word was destined to manifest.

“When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,

And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.”

Her eyes in mine. Still, patient, and piercing.

“And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”

And what is it to work with love? It certainly wasn’t this. Half-hungover in the back of a pedicab, I thought. Her eyes full and mine half-lit. Her eyes still and mine darting nervously.

“Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

For a moment I felt the urge to kiss her, and I wondered if she felt the same.

“For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.”

This was the end of our story. She leaned into the back of my bike and gave me a hug. I gave her a dollar and invited her to my show that night in hopes I could share my stories with her.

Later that evening, I recited poems into the ears of a sparse Monday-night crowd in a smoky dim-lit bar on the corner of Frenchmen and Esplanade. She was not there.

This morning it occurred to me that during the show I never looked directly into anyone in the crowds’ eyes. Instead, I looked over their heads and off into some vague space, front-center, left, right, abstract focal points like yoga drishdis; circles and squares of space nothing like the concentrated energy of an eye. But occasionally , I closed my eyes as I held the mic and imagined a girl in Mexico who had also looked into my eyes and told me a story.

The Lost Guides is a series of travel articles that contain little or no practical information. Instead, the focus is the feeling of a place, or moment.