Exposition

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story." --Ursula K. LeGuin

I created this blog quite a while ago, and have elected to place nothing upon it until now, when I believe I have tripped out a passable introduction to this thing that I have chosen to call Legenda.

Unfortunately for you, an introduction to Legenda involves an introduction to myself. That introduction basically consists of this: I see stories everywhere. Stories of good and evil, love and hatred, life and death. Human stories. Divine stories.

Each person, obviously, has a long, grand story composed of even smaller stories, which they share with the other people involved in them, and so on. Things and places also have stories. A creative writing course, or a particularly good history teacher, or even a cracked cell phone screen that launches you into narrative mode whenever someone questions it may have taught you. Some places and things hold more obvious stories than others. For example, I almost immediately recognize stories in things like abandoned houses, or used keys. I find it much more difficult to see the stories that might exist in, say, a brand-new Styrofoam cup, or a pack of lightbulbs.

Second, this is a blog about stories, which means that it is a blog about everything. Everyday stories of the people who float in and out of daily life will be mixed with fantasy stories about the people who float about in my head. History, the knowledge and lessons of those who have gone before, might blend with philosophy, in this case used to mean the beliefs and attitudes that motivate the characters around me. Mentions of and musings on virtue, justice, mercy, choices, responsibilities, duties, leisure, entertainment, community, friendship, joy, death, life, and love will crop up from time to time. Above all, there will be ample meditations on central player in the greatest story of all time: the story of the world, its fall, and its redemption.

Above I have placed a selected quote from author Ursula K. LeGuin: "The unread story is not a story". I could ruminate for a bit about how a greater variety of "unwritten" stories are read every day, as human beings bear witness to the events in the lives of other human beings, but I shall save that rumination for another time, perhaps another post. But it seems essentially true that stories of all sorts require audiences.

And here we return to the naming of this thing I call Legenda. The word legenda, from what I can understand of Internet dictionaries, comes from the medieval Latin meaning "to be read." Above all, I intend for this blog, this fantastically modern story medium, to be read. Perhaps it will be seen by only a few classmates who share my love for stories, or by one or two friends who are kind enough to consider my thoughts, or perhaps only by my solitary pair of eyes as they drift from line to line in the careful contemplation required for editing. But an audience of one is still an audience.

Legenda. It will be read.