The Gift of Purring Cat Meditation

December 25, 2022November 27, 2022 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Willow, goddess of Purring Cat Meditation (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Her name is Willow, and she helps me centre my being…

Willow is a diminutive 18-year old Russian blue cat, who I looked after for some friends in Mississauga. When I first met Willow, she responded with reticence–like all smart discerning cats. She appeared so delicate, I was scared to pick her up. I soon realized that this was a fallacy. That not only could I pick her up but that she loved to be held. I just needed to learn how.

As soon as I did, we became best friends. And it all came together with the Purring Cat Meditation.

“Time to feed me, Nina!” says Willow (photo by Nina Munteanu)

It starts out with her finding me “doing nothing terribly important” like typing on the computer, or something. A soft but decisive tap of the paw on my leg and I have to smile at her intense look up at me with those guileless emerald eyes. I abandon my work–how can I ignore such a plea?– and pick her up. After all, I know what she wants…And so starts our journey toward “nirvana”… the meditative state that will centre our beings and ultimately save the world.

I wander the house with her. We check out each room and make our silent observations. We end up in the bedroom upstairs, where she normally sleeps (except when she’s decided to join me on my bed to sit on me and purr in my face in the middle of the night).

*Willow playfully teasing (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

In her sanctuary, we drift to the window that faces the back yard, now cloaked in the fresh drifts of winter snow. The window is slightly open and a crisp breeze braces us with the deep scent of winter. I breathe in the fragrance of fallen leaves, mist and bark…

Willow settles into a feather-light pose in the crook of my arms and I hardly feel her. More like she and I have joined to become one. We are both purring …

We remain in Cat-Purr-Meditation for …

I have no idea. It feels like moments. Infinity. It encompasses and defines an entire world. We’ve just created something. Just by being.

*“Time to pick me up, Nina!” says Willow (photo by Nina Munteanu*

Cats–well, most animal companions–are incredibly centring and can teach us a lot about the art of simply being.

And meditating…

Whenever I run across a bout of writer’s block or need to stoke my muse, instead of trying harder, I stop and reach out for my cat-friend.

And practice Purring-Cat Meditation…

*First snow on the Otonabee River, Peterborough, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Writing a Cat Christmas…

December 21, 2022November 27, 2022 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

*First snow in Kawarthas, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

After I’d said goodbye to our visiting friends and done the dishes and tidied the house; after my husband and son had gone to bed, I sat in the dark living room lit only with the Christmas Tree lights and the flickering candle on my writing desk, and listened to soft Christmas music, primed to write…

*My cat Sammy watching the world (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

My male cat, smelling fresh from outside, found his rightful place on my lap and settled there, pinning me down with love. And there, as I breathed in the scent of wax and fir and cat I found myself again.

Christmas is, more than anything, a time of embracing paradox. It is an opportunity to still oneself amid the bustle; to find joy in duty; to give of one’s precious time when others have none, to embrace selflessness when surrounded by promoted selfishness, and to be genuine in a commercial and dishonest world. If one were to look beyond the rhetoric and imposed tradition, the Christmas season represents a time of focus, a time to reflect on one’s genuine nature and altruistic destiny. A time to reconnect with the harmony and balance in our lives.

*First snow on path into the forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

A time to sit with our cat, pinned with love, and write our next novel.

Merry Christmas!

*Heavy snow day in Scots Pine forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

NINA MUNTEANU is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

A Tardigrade Christmas…

December 25, 2021November 9, 2021 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

…A Different Christmas Story… (with a nod to Lewis Carroll)

Blika lived in Mossland with her clone sestras, gathering and sucking the delicious juices of detritus and algae. Never in a hurry, she lumbered from frond to frond on eight stubby legs in a gestalt of feasting and being. Blika led a microscopic life of bloated bliss—unaware of forests, human beings, quantum physics or the coming singularity…

A sudden fierce wind wicked her water away. In a burst of alien urgency, she wriggled madly for purchase on the frond as it shivered violently in the roaring wind. Blika lost hold and the wind swept her into a dark dryness. Her liquid life-force bleeding away from her, Blika crawled into herself. The moss piglet felt herself shrivel into oblivion.

No, not oblivion… more like a vast expanse…

She had entered a wonderland of twinkling lights in a vast fabric of dark matter. Where am I?

“Welcome, sestra!” boomed a large voice.

It occurred to her that she had never thought such a thing before. Am I dead? She’d never thought about existence before either. What has happened to me? And where are my sestras? She felt an overwhelming sadness. Something else she’d never felt before and wondered why she hadn’t. Did it have to do with that liquid that had always embraced her with its life-force? Here, in the darkness of space, she felt alone for the first time, separated from the plenum.

Blika beheld a being like her with eight arms and hands, seated on a throne and wearing a jeweled crown. “Why do you call me sestra?” Blika asked.

tardigrade-queen-by-thomas a gieseke copy

“Because we are ALL sestras! You are a Tardigrade, aren’t you?” She waved all eight arms at Blika. “Well, I am your queen!” She looked self-pleased. “You are in Tunland now! The land of awareness. And now that you are self-aware, you can do anything! We’re special,” the queen ended in smug delight. The folds of her body jiggled and shimmered.

“Why are we special?” Blika asked.

“Because we are!” the queen said sharply, already losing patience with her new subject. “Don’t you know that you can survive anything? Ionizing radiation. Huge pressure. Boiling heat. Freezing cold. Absolutely no air. And no water…”

Blika gasped. Water was the elixor that connected her to her sestras and her world… her…home…

“How do you think you got here, eh?” the queen mocked her with a sinister laugh. Blika cringed. The queen went on blithely, “So, where do you come from, piglet?”

“I’m trying to find my way home…”

Tardigrade holiday

“Your way? All ways here are my ways!”

“But I was just thinking—”

“I warn you, child…” The queen glowered at her. “If I lose my temper, you lose your head. Understand?”

Blika nodded, now missing her home even more.

“Why think when you can do!” the queen added, suddenly cheerful again. “First there is BE, then THINK, then DO. Why not skip the think part and go straight to the do part? In Tunland we do that all the time,” she went on blithely. “And, as I was saying, here we can do anything!”

The queen grabbed Blika by an arm and steered them through the swirling darkness of space toward a box-like floating object. “This is my doctor’s Tardis…”

“Doctor who?” Blika naively asked.

The queen shivered off her annoyance and led them eagerly through the door and into her kingdom.

They entered a strange place of giant blocks and whining sounds beneath a dark swirling sky.

The first thing Blika noticed was the huge tardigrades floating above them like dirigibles! Others were dressed in suits holding little suitcases and walking into and out of the huge blocks through doorways.

“We’ve crossed into another dimension—my universe,” the queen announced cheerfully. “Here you can do anything you want. So, why be tiny and feckless when you can be huge and powerful!” She studied Blika. “This is your moment to do what you could never do before. Think of the possibilities! You too could be huge!”

Blika stared at the strange world of smoke and metal and yearned for her simple mossy home.

As if she knew what Blika wanted, the queen quickly added, “But you can never go back home!”

“Why not?” Blika asked, disappointed.

“Because, that’s why!” the queen shouted. Squinting, she added, “It’s too late. It’s just not done! Once you’ve learned what the colour green means you can’t erase its significance!”

“But I still don’t know what the colour green means,” Blika complained. “And, besides, I think you’re wrong. Becoming self-aware doesn’t stop you from going home. It just changes its meaning. And if I can really do what I want, then you can’t stop me. I’m going home to my family.”

attack_of_the_tardigrades_by_ramul copy 2

The little hairs on the queen bristled. Then she grew terribly calm. “I won’t stop you, but…” The queen pointed to the floating tardigrades above them. “My water bear army will. I sentence you to remain in Tunland forever for your crime!”

“I haven’t done anything…yet.”

“You’ve broken the law of thinking before doing. In Tunland you have to skip that part—”

“You just made that up—”

“Doesn’t matter!” shouted the queen. “Sentence first, verdict afterwards!”

“That’s nonsense,” said Blika loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first.”

“Hold your tongue!” said the queen, turning a shade of chartreuse.

“I won’t,” said Blika.

“Off with your head!” the queen shouted at the top of her voice, pointing to Blika with all eight of her appendages. The water bear army hovered over Blika, taking aim. They were going to get more than her head with those lasers, Blika thought, and scurried for cover faster than her stubby eight legs had ever moved before. She was doomed—

Then, just beyond her sight, she saw—no felt—something far more significant than the colour green…or a huge bloated water bear army about to shoot her…

Water! She could taste it, smell it, hear it. Blika rejoiced with thoughts of her green home.

The water came in a giant wet wave of blue and silver and frothy green. Tunland sloshed then totally dissolved. Blika surfed the churning water. That green! She knew what it was! Blika reached out with her deft claws and snagged a tumbling moss frond. It finally settled and there were her sestras! So many of them clinging to the same green moss! She’d found her family! She was home! Yes, it was a different home and different sestras, but it was also the same. Love made it so…

Merry Christmas!

Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are plump, microscopic organisms with eight clawed legs. Fossils of tardigrades date to the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago. Over 900 species are known. Tardigrades were first described by the German pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773 and given the name Tardigrada, meaning “slow stepper,” by the Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani. Tardigrades reproduce asexually (parthenogenesis) or sexually. They mostly suck on the fluids of plant cells, animal cells, and bacteria.

Tardigrades survive adverse environmental stresses including:

High and low temperatures (e.g., -273°C to +151°C)
freezing and thawing
changes in salinity
lack of oxygen
lack of water
levels of X-ray radiation 1000x the lethal human dose
some toxic chemicals
boiling alcohol
low pressure of a vacuum
high pressure (up to 6x the pressure of the deepest ocean).

Tardigrades respond to adverse environmental stresses through “cryptobiosis”, a process that greatly slows their metabolism. Tardigrades survive dry periods by shriveling up into a little ball or tunand waiting it out. They make a protective sugar called trehalose, which moves into the cells to replace the lost water. You could say that the water bear turns into a gummy bear.

Tardigrades have revived after a 100 years of desiccation. The antioxidants they make soak up dangerous chemicals and tardigrades can also repair damaged DNA from long term dry-out. In low oxygen, the tardigrade stretches out, relaxed muscles letting more water and oxygen enter its cells. The tardigrade’s cold-resistant tun also prevents ice crystals that could damage cell membranes.

Tardigrades survive temperatures, pressures and ionizing radiation not normally found on Earth. All this raises questions of origin and evolutionary adaptation. How—and why—have tardigrades developed the ability to survive the vacuum and ionizing radiation of space? Some suggest that it’s because they originated there. Scientists argue that they developed extreme tolerances from Earth’s volatile environments (e.g., water bodies that freeze or dry up, and undergo anoxia). But, if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere. So, where is “home” really?…

My Book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press explores this creature and many other interesting things about water. Look for it on Amazon, Chapters, Kobo and in bookstores & libraries near you. If it’s not in your local library, ask for it.

The Gift of Purring Cat Meditation…

December 25, 2020November 25, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Her name is Willow, and she helps me centre my being…

As soon as I did, we became best friends. And it all came together with the Purring Cat Meditation.

Willow settles into a feather-light pose in the crook of my arms and I hardly feel her. More like she and I have joined to become one. We are both purring …

We remain in Cat-Purr-Meditation for …

I have no idea. It feels like moments. Infinity. It encompasses and defines an entire world. We’ve just created something. Just by being.

Cats–well, most animal companions–are incredibly centring and can teach us a lot about the art of simply being.

And meditating…

I write about this more in my article entitled “Wake Up Your Muse: How my Cat Taught Me the Art of Being“. Whenever I run across a bout of writer’s block or need to stoke my muse, instead of trying harder, I stop and reach out for my cat-friend.

And practice Purring-Cat Meditation…

*On the road to Wolfville, NS (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Writing a Cat Christmas…

December 22, 2020December 6, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*First snow in Peterborough, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

I move around a lot these days. It helps me to appreciate some of the most simple things in life and reminds me of what I love most about Christmas: how it focuses my heart and reconnects me. I don’t mean just with relatives and friends either, although the season certainly does that. I’m talking about my soul and the universe itself. Before I became an itinerant, Christmas bustled with my responsibilities as primary caregiver, social coordinator and hostess of major parties. After I’d said goodbye to our visiting friends and done the dishes and tidied the house; after my husband and son had gone to bed, I sat in the dark living room lit only with the Christmas Tree lights and the flickering candle, and listened to soft Christmas music, primed to write.

*Sammy, the cat (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

My male cat, smelling fresh from outside, found his rightful place on my lap and settled there, pinning me down with love. And there, as I breathed in the scent of wax and fir and cat I found myself again.

Christmas is, more than anything, a time of embracing paradox. It is an opportunity to still oneself amid the bustle; to find joy in duty; to give of one’s precious time when others have none, to embrace selflessness when surrounded by promoted selfishness, and to be genuine in a commercial and dishonest world. If one were to look beyond the rhetoric and imposed tradition, the Christmas season represents a time of focus, a time to reflect on one’s genuine nature and altruistic destiny. A time to reconnect with the harmony and balance in our lives.

A time to sit with our cat, pinned with love, and write our next novel.

Merry Christmas!

*First snow in Ontario field (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Find Your Focus This Christmas–Reprise

December 20, 2018March 30, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Forest path in Scarborough, Ontario (photo by Nina Munteanu)

How many of you are still running around preparing for the Christmas celebration or secular family festivity? Buying that last minute gift you’d forgotten or were chasing down since a bazillion days ago? Or making last minute changes to your travel plans, house-cleaning for guests, mailing of cards or parcels or meal preparations?

Well, you’re reading this blog post … That means you’re sitting down and taking a minute to relax and regroup. That’s good. Remember to breathe… while I tell you a story…

I’d just finished a three-day drive through snow and rain storms from Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, to Toronto, Ontario, where I was staying for a few days before catching a flight to Vancouver to spend Christmas with my son and good friends on the west coast. Talk about fast living.

Sammy

Most of us think of Christmas as a busy time, of getting together (often dutifully) with family and friends, exchanging presents and feasting. Christmas is certainly this, but that is only a shallow view of a far deeper event; and I don’t mean only for Christians.

Whether celebrating the holy light of Hannukah or the birth of Jesus, or the winter solstice, this season provides us with the opportunity to meditate on far more than the surficial nature of the symbols we have come to associate with the season: the Christmas tree, presents, turkey dinner, Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas—most of which originate from pagan tradition, by the way.

Says Lama Christie McNally (author of The Tibetan Book of Meditation), “once you dive below the surface, you will discover a beautiful clear place—like a diamond hidden beneath the rubble. It is your own mind, uncovered … Tibetans say we have only just begun the process of awakening—that we still have quite a way to go in our evolutionary process. And it has nothing to do with building spaceships or computers. The next step in our evolution takes place within.”

Christmas is, more than anything, a time of embracing paradox. It is an opportunity to still oneself amid the bustle; to find joy in duty; to give of one’s precious time when others have none, to embrace selflessness when surrounded by promoted selfishness, and to be genuine in a commercial and dishonest world. If one were to look beyond the rhetoric and imposed tradition, the Christmas season represents a time of focus, a time to reflect on one’s genuine nature and altruistic destiny. A time to reconnect with the harmony and balance in our lives.

A time to sit with our cat, pinned with love, and write our next novel.

Merry Christmas and Happy Winter!

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s recent book is the bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” (Mincione Edizioni, Rome). Her latest “Water Is…” is currently an Amazon Bestseller and NY Times ‘year in reading’ choice of Margaret Atwood.

A Tardigrade Christmas…

December 29, 2017September 9, 2018 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

…A Different Christmas Story…

No, not oblivion… more like a vast expanse…

She had entered a wonderland of twinkling lights in a vast fabric of dark matter. Where am I?

“Welcome, sestra!” boomed a large voice.

Blika beheld a being like her with eight arms and hands, seated on a throne and wearing a jeweled crown. “Why do you call me sestra?” Blika asked.

“Why are we special?” Blika asked.

Blika gasped. Water was the elixor that connected her to her sestras and her world… her…home…

“How do you think you got here, eh?” the queen mocked her with a sinister laugh. Blika cringed. The queen went on blithely, “So, where do you come from, piglet?”

“I’m trying to find my way home…”

“Your way? All ways here are my ways!”

“But I was just thinking—”

“I warn you, child…” The queen glowered at her. “If I lose my temper, you lose your head. Understand?”

Blika nodded, now missing her home even more.

“Why think when you can do!” the queen added, suddenly cheerful again. “First there is BE, then THINK, then DO. Why not skip the think part and go straight to the do part? In Tunland we do that all the time,” she went on cheerfully. “And, as I was saying, here we can do anything!”

The queen grabbed Blika by an arm and steered them through the swirling darkness of space toward a box-like floating object. “This is my doctor’s Tardis…”

“Doctor who?” Blika naively asked.

The queen shivered off her annoyance and led them eagerly through the door and into her kingdom.

They entered a strange place of giant blocks and whining sounds beneath a dark swirling sky.

Blika stared at the strange world of smoke and metal and yearned for her simple mossy home.

As if she knew what Blika wanted, the queen quickly added, “But you can never go back home!”

“Why not?” Blika asked, disappointed.

“I haven’t done anything…yet.”

“You’ve broken the law of thinking before doing. In Tunland you have to skip that part—”

“You just made that up—”

“Doesn’t matter!” shouted the queen. “Sentence first, verdict afterwards!”

“That’s nonsense,” said Blika loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first.”

“Hold your tongue!” said the queen, turning a shade of chartreuse.

“I won’t,” said Blika.

Then, just beyond her sight, she saw—no felt—something far more significant than the colour green…or a huge bloated water bear army about to shoot her…

Water! She could taste it, smell it, hear it. Blika rejoiced with thoughts of her green home.

Merry Christmas!

Tardigrades survive adverse environmental stresses including:

High and low temperatures (e.g., -273°C to +151°C)
freezing and thawing
changes in salinity
lack of oxygen
lack of water
levels of X-ray radiation 1000x the lethal human dose
some toxic chemicals
boiling alcohol
low pressure of a vacuum
high pressure (up to 6x the pressure of the deepest ocean).

Tardigrades respond to adverse environmental stresses through “cryptobiosis”, a process that greatly slows their metabolism. Tardigrades survive dry periods by shriveling up into a little ball or tun and waiting it out. They make a protective sugar called trehalose, which moves into the cells to replace the lost water. You could say that the water bear turns into a gummy bear.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist, limnologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books.

Finding Focus at Christmas-Reprise

December 22, 2015April 4, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 4 Comments

The Beach in winter (photo by Nina Munteanu)

How many of you are still running around

preparing for the Christmas celebration or secular family festivity? Buying that last minute gift you’d forgotten or were chasing down since a bazillion days ago? Or making last minute changes to your travel plans, house-cleaning for guests, mailing of cards or parcels or meal preparations?

Well, you’re reading this blog post … That means you’re sitting down and taking a minute to relax and regroup. That’s good. Remember to breathe… while I tell you a story…

I’d just finished a three-day drive through snow and rain storms from

Sammy, my cat

Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, to Toronto, Ontario, where I’m staying for two days before catching a flight to Vancouver to spend Christmas with my son and good friends on the west coast. Talk about fast living.

Before I became an itinerant, Christmas bustled with my responsibilities as primary caregiver, social coordinator and hostess of major parties.

After I’d said goodbye to our visiting friends and done the dishes and tidied the house, and my husband and son had gone to bed, I sat in the dark living room lit only with the Christmas Tree lights and the flickering candle. Listening to soft Christmas music, I was primed to write. My male cat, smelling fresh from outside, found his rightful place on my lap and settled there. He then trapped my hand with his paws, pinning me down with love. And there, as I breathed in the scent of wax and fir and cat I found myself again.

A time to sit with our cat, pinned with love, and write our next novel.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books.

Beat the Christmas Frenzy and Find Your Focus

December 21, 2014April 5, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 6 Comments

Snow in The Beach (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Well, you’re reading this blog post … That means you’re sitting down and taking a minute to relax and regroup. That’s good. Remember to breathe… while I tell you a story…

A time to sit with our cat, pinned with love, and write our next novel.

Merry Christmas!

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books.

The Resurgence of Oral Storytelling: the Audio Book

December 2, 2014April 5, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 1 Comment

Cows pasturing in Arth, Switzerland (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Griot. Raconteur. Bard. Jongleur. Seanchai. Skop. Troubadors and minstrals. Spinner of yarns. Any way you call them they are storytellers. And storytellers have shaped our societies and reflected our cultures for all of recorded history, and before—from the time of cave paintings, songs and campfires.

Because oral storytelling is told through memory it spreads with a fluid and dynamic quality whose effect is alive, immediate and visceral.

Being Romanian Helped…

When I was a young girl, I wanted to be an actress. I enjoyed telling stories to my brother and sister. My sister and I shared a bazillion adventure stories (most of them twisted and funny) about two twin brothers and sisters who solved mysteries in outer space. Because our cast and stories were epic, we dispensed with the limitations of set (not enough dolls and stuffed animals) and went straight into the oral storytelling tradition: we liberated ourselves and shared our stories anywhere and anytime we chose. While I never did participate in theatre or drama in school, I did cultivate the art of oral storytelling. An art I may have come by quite honestly as a Romanian. Romanians are consummate storytellers; the country is brim with imaginative and compelling folktales, myth and supernatural phenomena.

Romanian oral epic includes a large body of heroic songs, fantastic and mythological songs, haiduc songs (on the exploits of heroic social outlaws), and balladic narrative songs of a more lyric nature.

When my son was growing up, I used to read him stories at bedtime. It was a time of incredible bonding: sharing stories and laughter. I did all the voices and sound effects. It didn’t stop there; soon I was making up scenarios all my own with a cast of hundreds and my son leapt in with both feet. It was like when I was younger, creating stories with my sister. My son and I created worlds peopled by fantastic characters; there was “little girl” (me) and there was Baby Poopy and Baby Bang Bang (him) and a host of others. My son played some parts (usually the rational ones) and I played others (usually the silly ones). Using Leggo, we even created a whole new twisted StarWars universe where Luke Skywalker had a falsetto voice and Darth Vader had given up his evil ways and turned into an old grumpy hermit with a flatulence problem, growing beans in his garden. There were no boundaries to our imaginative play.

The Age of Oral Storytelling

Oral storytelling is an ancient tradition and the most personal and intimate form of storytelling. The storyteller and the listeners are physically close and, through the story connection, psychically close. Storytellers bring their own personality and character to the story; they ultimately reveal and share themselves through their telling and the listeners reveal and share themselves through their reception of the story. The intimacy and connection is deepened by the flexibility of oral storytelling which allows the tale to be molded to each audience and location or environment where it’s being told. Listeners experience the immediacy of a creative process taking place in their presence and, even more than that, they experience the empowerment of being a part of that creative process (which is often interactive).

Early storytelling combined stories, poetry, music, and dance. Storytelling was natural for everyone but those who excelled at it became the entertainers, educators, cultural advisors and historians of their community. The history of a culture was handed down from generation to generation through its oral storytellers.

The 9th century fictional storyteller Scheherazade in “1001 Arabian Nights” saves herself from execution by telling tales. Centuries before Scheherazade the storyteller Vyasa at the beginning of the Indian epic Mahabharata says, “If you listen carefully, at the end you’ll be someone else.”

During the Middle Ages storytellers told their stories in market places and became honored members in royal courts. According to storyteller Ruth Sawyer, Medieval storytellers were expected to know all the current tales. They were expected to “repeat all the noteworthy theses from the universities, to be well informed on court scandal, to know the healing power of herbs and simples (medicines), to be able to compose verses to a lord or lady at a moment’s notice, and to play on at least two of the instruments then in favor at court.”

The Age of Audiobooks and iPhone

An audio book is a recording of the contents of a book read aloud. They have been around for over 70 years, but their popularity has swiftly grown to an all time high.

Ubiquitous mobile devices like iPods, iPhones have made audiobooks much more accessible and easy to download and portably listen to. Audiobooks are also valuable learning tools due to their format. They are convenient in multi-tasking scenarios.

Audiobooks on cassette or CD are typically more expensive than hardcovers because of the added expense of recording and the lack of the economy of scale in high “print” runs that are available in print book publishing. However, downloadable audiobooks cost less than hardcovers and can even be less than their paperback equivalents. Market penetration of audiobooks is still substantially lower than for their printed counterparts despite the high market penetration of the hardware (MP3 and WMA players) and despite the massive market penetration achieved by audio music products. But this is changing.

Downloadable audiobooks don’t carry mass production costs; they don’t require storage of a large inventory, physical packaging or transportation and even if “returned” don’t require a cost of physical return or destruction/disposal. Like the downloadable ebook, audiobooks are taking the storytelling industry by storm.

Amy Harmon of the New York Times recounts this scenario: “Jim Harris, a lifelong bookworm, cracked the covers of only four books last year. But he listened to 54, all unabridged. He listened to Harry Potter and “Moby-Dick, Don DeLillo and Stephen King. He listened in the car, eating lunch, doing the dishes, sitting in doctors’ offices and climbing the stairs at work.” Harmon recounts how 53 year old Mr. Harris, a computer programmer in Memphis, hadn’t read that much since he was in college. Of course, for some diehard literary types “listening” isn’t the same as “reading”.

Fortunately for Mr. Harris, the ranks of the reading purists are dwindling, says Harmon. “Fewer Americans are reading books than a decade ago, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, but almost a third more are listening to them on tapes, CD’s and iPods and iPhones.”

For a growing group of devoted listeners, the popularity of audio books is redefining the notion of reading, which for centuries has been centered on the written word. Audio books, says Harmon, have seduced members of a literate but busy crowd by allowing them to read while doing something else. “Digital audio that can be zapped onto an MP3 player is also luring converts. Audio books, which still represent only about 3 percent of all books sold, do not exactly herald a return to the Homeric tradition. But their growing popularity has sparked debate among readers, writers and cultural critics about the best way to consume literature.”

For me, the audiobook represents more. Audiobooks aren’t just another aspect of our convenient, fast-paced, multitasking culture. Audio books provide a different form of creative storytelling that is both refreshing and thoroughly engaging.

Of course, some books are better told this way than others and the storyteller’s role is paramount. Inflection, cadence, passion and voice all play a critical role in the oral narrative.

My Audiobooks

My space detective adventure book “Outer Diverse” was originally released by Iambik Audiobooks as an audiobook, narrated by Dawn Harvey. It and its second “Inner Diverse” (and soon third book “Metaverse” of the Splintered Universe Trilogy) are now available on Audiobook.com, through Amazon and on iTunes. And I am ecstatic! When I first listened to the proof, I was blown away. It was as though Dawn had created a whole new story, as though she’d breathed life into Rhea Hawke and the myriad of alien characters in Rhea’s universe. Dawn had applied cadence, inflection, joy and humor into each character and set. Remember how Orsen Wells created mass hysteria with his rendition of “War of the Worlds”?

Give the gift of pure joy with audiobooks.