Even though

…I’m tired from driving 6 hours uphill in the midst of raging snowstorm flung from the treaded blackness of some mesmirizing semi in front of me, even though twice I had to stop and let the deer cross, because that’s what the sign says: deer crossing, and I had to stop every 2 kilometers after the sign, and even though my neck was sore from the extra load of guild meeting material weighing as heavy as a moose on my brain, (sorry, no pictures to prove anything, even though I might’ve been able to, but with the coffee cup in one hand and the cd case in the other, there were no hands left for the camera) and even though this weight is still heavy now, although now it only feels as heavy as a small grey car (mine, because I know how heavy it is), I was fascinated with how many times the tale of James Frey steered in my direction. I began to wonder on the ride home if the single-minded focus on the one path in the middle of the snow was our perception of the truth/reality and whether the snow layered and blowing around the sides and in-between each car/truck was everything else. Does there need to be boundaries set for non-fiction? Do we need to have factual truth? What is factual truth? Do we need to create a genre in-between fact and fiction? Hmm, here’s a hmm moment: tonight my newly created genre is called blogging. It’s full of the in-between.

3 thoughts on “Even though

  1. Hmmm… so, I deduce your car is lighter than a moose. I don’t know what to make of that. Is it literally true?

    Some truths can’t be articulated literally. That, it seems to me, is one of the primary functions of poetry. However, I’m wary of dualisms like fact:fiction; my response is usually to look for something underlying the dualism. In the case of fact:fiction, I suspect what underlies it is truth. (Mood: contentious. And happy, as always (might or might not be literally true).

  2. Thanks Anita.

    I don’t know how much a moose weighs Pete, but I’ve had to push my car before and I do know it’s pretty light.

    I think what you say about literal truth is what I like about writing; however, the author’s perspective isn’t necessarily about truth, except in the case of non-fiction, where everyone takes it to be so. As Proust says, our past is always mediated through our present. Perhaps this is the same with truth.

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