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Friday 13 June 2008 | 2 cookies in the jar
I record my life, sifting and trying to separate what is real from what I’ve dreamed. I have decided to tell you what is fact versus what is unfact primarily because (a) I am giving you a portrait of the essence of me, and (b) because, living where I do, living in the chasm that cuts through thought, it is lonely. Come with me, reader. I am toying with you, yes, but for a real reason. I am asking you to enter the confusion with me, to give up the ground with me, because sometimes that frightened floaty place is really the truest of all. Kierkegaard says, “The greatest lie of all is feeling the firmness beneath our feet. We are at our most honest when we are lost.” Enter that lostness with me. Live in the place where I am, where the view is murky, where the connecting bridges and orienting maps have been surgically stripped away.
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W.O.W.
The invitation begs the question, “Why should I trust Lauren Slater enough to say ‘yes’ to such an invitation?” I’m not saying I don’t. I mean, I’m not talking about that, just speaking about it.
Taking advice from Kierkegaard on the correct posture for consciousness to assume in relation to “reality” is like taking your car to MIT for an oil change. I suspect Slater hasn’t the slightest shred of an idea what Kierkegaard Was Trying To Say.
I don’t either, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for using high-octane quotes I don’t understand. If the fool would persist in his folly, and all that.
Is it really a problem with narrative? What is it about autobiographical space that’s a fact/fiction gray area? Is it analogous to Schrödinger’s uncertainty—like, you know, we can’t know position and velocity simultaneously? Observing ourselves, we short-circuit reality by observing the observer, like a hall of mirrors?
Again, don’t get me wrong. Tweaking literalists is great fun. When I’ve shared my attempts at fiction, I’ve been floored by the immediate identification of any male “main character” with me, and (sometimes) scornful judgment because maybe said main male character is sexist, dissolute, shadowy, opportunistic, drunk, whatever. I’ve even maliciously toyed with earnest souls who’ve asked, “Did you really do all this stuff?” “Ah yes! Every bit of it! You should read the shenanigans I’ve left out!”