“My life as a narrative” was born during a rainy day, in North Island, in old Europe. I know that North Island or “Te Ika-a-Māui” is one of the main islands of New Zealand. I apologize for the geographical mistake but being a child I baptized the island as “Isla del Norte”, and as you well know, bad habits are hard to annihilate.

Photo: My North Island. A wonderful place. (2015)

After a few weeks I noticed (thanks Google for that) that a psychologist wrote about this topic during the 80s – Bruner J.S. The book – Actual minds, Possible Worlds (Harvard University Press) became a best seller and an influential theory at the epoch. The book was born one year before I was; being published the same day I came to this world.

Well, I have to admit that I didn´t read the entire book, I was breathless during a few minutes turning pages while reading short paragraphs and quoted sentences. I grunted– This is mine! My Spanish growl spread throughout the old library, turned around of “North Island”, and came back to slap gently my face. It´s a good book.

Stories are about the vicissitudes of human intention. Trouble is what drives drama, and drama is constructed in life as in literature. There are three aspects of story: fabula, sjuzet and forma. How shall we understand a story? Romance, farce, tragedy, bildungsroman, black comedy, adventure story, fairytale, wonders tale, etc. – Bruner

You are right. I love stories. I was educated through stories about medieval knights on horseback and strong women who have to get up early to go to work. Nowadays, I am interested about how people tell the stories of their lives, that´s why I really enjoy reading blogs about travels and adventures and also autobiographies. I truly believe in the therapeutic and educative power of storytelling. I am also very interested in how people see their lives; I use to ask them to tell me their lives in 5 minutes in order to see the genre they use. It´s very interesting how our minds see and interpret the story of our lives whether particular memories are distorted in a characteristic way.

– We build up our stories

World Making and Story Making is the principal function of mind whether in the sciences or in the arts. Stories are happening in people´s heads, and great stories happen to people who know how to tell them. Sorry Edgar Allan Poe, John Updike or Stephen King, but my grandfather is the best storyteller I´ve ever met.

Photo: Church in My North Island. (2015)

– Why do you insist to see your life as a romance if it´s obviously a black comedy? Comedies are much fun, comedy and satire, sarcasm and skepticism. Thanks granddad.

• How do you interpret your experience?
• Do you believe in “life making”?
• Could we construct ourselves “autobiographically”?
• Which genre are you using?

Even if, with respect to life and narrative, we discover, that we cannot tell the dancer from the dance, that may be good enough.

And yes, a man who writes stories with a considerable good grammar is so damn sexy from every angle, and virtually immortal by the eyes of a writer – I told.

Pd. If you are still thinking about «Bildungsroman» or «syuzhet» just click. I did it also.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment or just say hello