The Storyteller's Notebook
by Sam Yada Cannarozzi

Writers, all the way back to Shakespeare or before as far as can be determined, have always kept notebooks as painters kept sketchbooks. In these notebooks they jotted down ideas, notions, story structure and tutti quanti. A number of years ago I started to note in a very unsystematic way, bits of this and that, that might one day be used in a storytelling performance somewhere. What follows this short introduction is a simply list of phrases, images, curiosities etc. that I have entitled A Pot Pourri of Jewels for Language/ or a Sundry of Miscellany. It’s just for fun... But at the same time I thought, what if other tellers had similar lists, and what if they could be combined or exchanged?! And that got me excited. So I’ll just throw out the idea here that storytellers who are interested send in what they have and we’ll try very simply to collect all in one place so that it be accessible to everyone. I was not very precise about all this, often times I just noted a name or a country, perhaps more precise reference could be given. In any case I think the most important thing to do is to start compiling. Happy hunting..with your ears..!

• As a description for a story character why not try—"She has the foot of a fisher, the leg of a farmer, and the arm of a hunter to add to her golden head, silver breast and bronze hips. She was a real lady!"
• Why not use Robert Louis Stevenson or Mark Twain as a story opening? "It is grown up people who make the (nursery) stories; all the children do is jealously preserve the text."
• Think of the surprise of your audience when you tell them that the main character in your story has... "Oracular pubic hair!!!!"
• Or how about you the teller, seemingly lost in your own story and preferring- "And here I am not more clairvoyant than a mole."
• How about exclaiming every once in a while "Hailstones and halibut bones!"
• Would there be a more enchanting couple than "Peeping Tom and Lady Godiva?!"
• They galloped faster than cloud shadows across the steps.
• Even the wind held its breath.
• Mountains, the cloud cutters.
• Uncanny and miscanny.
• The Bedouin definition of hospitality: You are welcome three days—salaam-greeting, paam-eating, kalaam-speaking, but then dreaded like the pest.
• From the Zulu: When he lay down he was the size of rivers. When he got up he was the size of mountains.

—published in WIP Winter 1999

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