Lifelines by Laura J. Oliver

The royal family in England has a new Raven Master. People follow him online. There are currently seven birds in what is collectively called an “unkindness” or a “conspiracy” of ravens. They are free to fly about the castle grounds during the day but are brought in for protection at night. Legend decrees that if the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall.

Thinking about kingdoms and collectives, I learn that we refer to a group of owls as a “parliament” and to geese on the ground as a “gaggle” but a “skein” in the sky. My friend Jim, however, has just one bird–a parrot I can hear squawking as I enter his home office to be interviewed on camera about my life as an editor, writer, and writing mentor.

The interview begins with an introduction to Jack, a handsome bird the size of a man’s hand with deep green feathers and shiny black eyes. He jumps to the vertical bars of his cage for a closer look as I approach. He’s all business, and Jack can talk. We greet each other eye to eye, his tiny, scaly feet sliding down the bars as if down a fireman’s pole until he’s had enough and screeches indignantly, “I’m working here!” dismissing me by jumping back to his perch. He cocks his head and, for emphasis, whacks some dangling bells—really showing those bells and me, who’s boss. A group of parrots is called a “pandemonium,” and I can see why.

Jim and I settle on two straight-back chairs in front of a huge window to talk. Golden sunlight illuminates what appears to be an ancestral oil portrait on the far wall. I don’t know what he is going to ask, and I hope I can maintain my train of thought. I want anyone watching this video to know how sacred I hold the work of helping others make their stories the best they can be. How it is the teaching of craft, but it is also a holy mandate to stay present, find meaning in experience, and make what happened, what matters. 

Will I say that? Will I be careful that the only person I’m laughing at is me? Will I cry? Alone in my office, I often do both. Cry and laugh at myself.

Jack is shrieking at his exclusion, so Jim pauses the interview to let him out of his cage. Now I’m talking into the camera, holding eye contact with Jim who is seated a few feet away off-camera as before, only now there’s a bird performing the macarena on his shoulder. Jack is side-shuffling about, raising his little dinosaur feet to admire them, now giving Jim’s collar what-for with a flurry of pecks. Jim’s eyes never leave mine as he swats at the bird with a practiced hand. 

Voices on the street are music without melody as I try to maintain focus on the energy exchanged between readers and writers, but it’s a monumental effort not to say, “Uh, Jim, there’s a bird having his way with your shirt.”

Finally, Jack is relegated to his happy place—Jim’s sock drawer– where he sits amidst waves of rolled socks. He blinks at me with his beady black eyes lest I forget, he’s working here! As Jim and I settle in to talk about story, the engine of the universe, the maker of worlds, it is he who tells me a story. 

First recounted by the writer Susan Griffin, it is the tale of how the Jewish surrealist poet Robert Desnos, imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt in 1944, saved himself and his fellow prisoners in one brilliant moment of inspired passion. Where did his inspiration come from? You tell me. 

Desnos, a member of the French Resistance, was being held in a barracks with other prisoners when Gestapo guards rounded them up and ordered them onto a flatbed truck for transport to the gas chambers. Knowing their fate, the men rode in silence. Even the guards chose not to speak.

When they arrived, the men were ordered off the truck and lined up to be marched to their deaths. But as Griffin writes, suddenly Denos jumped out of line, grasped the hand of the man in front of him, and in full view of the Nazi guards, began reading the prisoner’s palm—foretelling his future with the confidence of a seer. With mounting excitement, Desnos exclaimed at the man’s lifeline, predicting great love, many children, and abiding joy. His enthusiasm was so intense and infectious that suddenly, another prisoner thrust out his palm for a reading, then another, and another. In each hopeless hand, Desnos saw only the grace of long life, healthy children, and abundant joy. 

The Nazi guards listening became increasingly uncomfortable with their mission. As each prisoner was assured a future of long life and love, the guards became confused and ill at ease. Could this be true, they must have wondered? What this man was saying? With what authority did he speak? Desnos spun one alternate reality after another. Life is good; life is long. We are not going to die today.

Not today, 

The disoriented Nazis raised their guns, and instead of forcing the prisoners into the gas chamber, they were ordered back onto the truck and returned to their barracks. Our stories, if we believe them, become the tellers of us. 

I’m so utterly captivated by Jim’s tale that it fills all the space where I might have remembered what I said on camera. As I return to my car, the breeze nods the yellow bonnets of daffodils where they stand– a collective of sunshine in the park. Customers clutch warm scones in waxed bags as they bustle from the High Street bakery. Then I get in my car, look in the review mirror, and try to patch it together. What on earth did I say in the window light of Jim’s office? 

I think I said that’s what I want to do with my stories–those creative engines of the universe– 

inspire a new picture of the world, one we can live up to, one that becomes us.

Give me your hand. Your heartline is long, deep, and unbroken. So is mine. I predict we are going to live till love liberates us. 

Share the vision. Share the story. Spread the word.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.