Chapters:

Intro

As strange as it may sound, I never considered myself much of a writer. I always loved stories, and so, at some point in my life, I started writing them down. But my first love was story-telling, my first love was Sophie.

Sophie was a wonderful story-teller, she always found the tipping point between reality and fiction that makes stories so great and engaging, and when she didn’t, it often ended in a good laugh. Most story-tellers are not writers, their stories are not written down, they are flexible and spontaneous, they change with time, are born and dead with the ones that tell them. Stories on paper often feel heavy, they are pulled down by the weight of their structure. They need beautiful language to pull the reader in, and are anchored between the pages of books. Books are cages and libraries are zoos, keeping the stories in for the reader to enjoy. Story-tellers play in the wild, without rules, chasing their stories for a while and letting them go. They dance and sing with them, give life to stories that would never be so vivid on paper. They throw their stories in the air, and let them take flight, soar in the sky and never come back. Story-telling is the best to rekindle the fire of writing when I feel lost at sea with no land in view. It is my treasure island in the ocean, giving me a little bit to survive and get by, until I have to set sail again.

I often visited Sophie and asked her to tell me of her life, I did not care if the things she told really happened, I just needed to listen and let her take me on adventures.