Bill Durden
“A story…can carry a name beyond the clouds, beyond even time itself”—as the character, Willie Maugham, observes in the novel, The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng. On this page then I commit my mature, much traveled and treasured knapsack— which I affectionately call “Knappie”— to story. It is advanced in age, but for me it is reliable and enduring. It has accompanied me in all parts of the world, in all types of weather. I have often filled it to the breaking point, but it neither bursts nor complains—even when I sometimes forget where I placed it. It remains faithful and “has my back” as I travel on. “Knappie” is mere stuff to those other than me—of unassuming canvas material—outdated in design— and will be forgotten in time, but with these printed words it, too, becomes “storied stuff” and is carried “beyond time itself.”