you know it ... though you might not want to admit it ... . When they go really bad, you can read it in their faces -- the wide, vacant stares, the eyes twitching; their lips tremble. And you see them in knots on street corners, pitching pennies at passing school children to catch their attention. Whispering -- "Psst! You wanna hear a story?

"Once upon a times ... I got 'em. Wanna taste?"

"Happy endings --"

Sad.

And when storytelling guilds begin to go bad ...

when they have only begun to sour ... when they can still be saved ... isn't that is the time to act?

But you have to remember -- be gentle; it is not the storytelling guild's fault; it is not the guild that owns the blame ... at least, not entirely. That rests almost entirely with its members, with the storytellers themselves ... who first raised the guild and who were, in turn, raised by the storytelling guild ... and who turned their backs on it.

Who abandoned their first community of storytellers ... .

Perhaps the issue is time. Most certainly, there is there an issue with time; there always is --

Or physical health? Perhaps.

Priorities ...

Or ego ...

Perhaps it is simply a matter of growth; as a storyteller you outgrew your storytelling guild. It happens ... especially with the carrot of eventual membership in the Storytellers' White Lodge ever dangling before you. Dangling ... membership --

It could be disillusionment. A realization that you're never going to be as good a storyteller as you imagined yourself to be. In fact, you tell yourself, you are not a storyteller at all ...

when,

in fact,

you are ... .

to be continued

"There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk around the whole world till we come back to the same place ..."

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