Narrating Presence
Learning to love the world is an activity that requires the cultivation of the skill of being present in the world. In being present in a place and with a people one learns the stories that constitute that place and those people, liberating them from being "those people" to become particular people like Lorna, Emma, Ted, or Michelle. It is this activity of "storying" that Murat Ates has embarked upon in volume two of his Life Fire Prose collection of short stories. An occasional friend, Ates confessed in a letter written on the inside of the cover to me that this book attempts to be "a little more loving." Ironically, I think he might just have succeeded. I say ironically because the stories that Ates tells are the confessions of a man who has tried his best to love and be present, but time and again has faltered. He does not hide his pettiness in the frustration he experienced that day in Stella's. He does not attempt to justify his failure ...