888 - Identity is Story

In the wee small hours this sounds profound, so publish and be damned.

The civil right of identity is the right to tell stories.

Tell your life story: it is who you are.
Tell a story about your life;
Tell it how you please;
Tell it in whatever manner you please:
In words,
In pictures,
By your actions,
With explanation,
Embellished,
Plain-spoken,
Fictitious,
Silently,
In contradiction,
Many times and
Ways over.

Tell it quietly, among friends;
Tell it with friends -
Tell stories together:
About your kin,
About your kind,
About humankind,
Kindly.
Tell stories about this world;
Tell them about this world and its kind,
And others not of its kind -
Forge your identity:
Only the unkind could steal it.

My stories are not to be stolen,
Made slave, nor slave master:
I am not to be made victim by stories you tell of me.
I am the master of my own tales -
Director, captain,
Beloved ravisher.
Ariadne taught me to weave:
Like you, I weave well.

The grandest narrative is
No narrative at all
Unless we wish it to be -
As the man once said:
"I am forsaken!" - till he
Claimed his stories back,
Or forged new ones,
To tell on the road to his companions,
Or so they told us -
More than could fill all the books of this world.

Our right of identity is the right to tell stories.
Under threat we will see our stories stolen away.
I will not let my story be stolen.
I will tell my stories
Even if to myself.