Today, the sky is gray and I am floating about my ideas trying to figure out what is relevant and necessary to share for you to understand what is important in my story. Before I tell you my story, I want you to understand a few things — understanding those things isn’t necessary, but it will be helpful to understand that you don’t understand everything and that somethings must simply be accepted or rejected without understanding.

Some things about my story are exactly the same as any other story. Throughout the story things will happen and things will be done by characters. This is a matter of standard form for almost every story ever shared. Stories have characters. This is the widely accepted truth about stories, as is the fact that Stories have a point of view. My story is a story about a person. In my story that person is an ambiguous “I.”

Don’t assume anything about “I” other than the story is about them. Eventually, they will either be real or they will not, but that will happen as a matter of course in the telling of the story.

The story is not told from the point of view of “I” — the story is told by a turtle to an audience. What you need to know about this turtle will be told as the story unfolds. What you need to know about the audience is nothing. The audience is irrelevant.

The main characters in the story also don’t really matter, but for those of you that think such things are important to a story, I will explain who they are.

I. I is a person full of possibility, impossibility, and most common human traits. The defining characteristic of I is that they believe in something.

You. You is both singular and a plurality. Read that how you will. Understand it how you choose. Eventually it will either make sense or not. I would caution you to reserve judgment on You. You deserves better.

We. We may or may not exist, but throughout the story, the other characters believe We exists and that is enough.

Che. Che is clearly someone who thinks something about something and acts accordingly.

If you find any of this confusing, I offer my apologies. I am trapped in my shell and find it difficult to reveal what is inside.  It is my hope that as I tell my story, things will become more clear and that in the end, you’ll understand why I’m swimming here telling you a story.