Tonight's title is a lyric from the incredible William Elliot Whitmore's "Dry". He’s an artist I’ve been listening to a lot these past few weeks, though I can’t really explain why, except perhaps to say that this season more than any other always drives me to minimalism, some visceral desire to mirror the starkness and practicality that winter necessitates. Like winter, nothing about Whitmore is flowery or pretentious; it’s just as easy to imagine him strumming away on some rickety cabin porch with a dog at his feet as it is on stage playing to adoring fans. His melodies are simple, and his words are as unhurried and swirling as the creeks and streams he writes about. Plus, his journal entries are kind of wonderful:
“July 13, 2009. I bought a dog from an Amish family over in Van Buren county. He's a mutt just like me. He acts Amish, not wanting anything to do with fancy store-bought toys. He'd rather chew a stick, and he does it with a certain dignity indicative of his roots. He works hard too. Why, just the other day, he worked his ass off chasing rabbits in my yard until damn near sundown.
December 28, 2009. Winter snows have buried the midwest and the birds are battling at the feeder. The blue jays are the mean bastards, the red headed woodpeckers give them a run for their money, and the finches do the best they can.” (http://www.williamelliottwhitmore.com/journal.php)
Anyway, yeah. Point being, check him out.
As usual, I haven’t really made use of this blog for any purpose whatsoever, let alone the ones I’d originally intended. But instead I got the idea of using it as a dumping ground for some of my more interesting assignments, so that way even if people aren’t being updated on what’s going on in my pretty much non-existent free time, they’ll at least know what’s going on in school. Yeah you heard me Mom. Feel free to tape this webpage on the fridge with all my A++ ‘port cards.
So far one of my favorite classes this semester has been my seminar class, entitled “Based on True Events: The Boundary Between Fact and Fiction in Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry”. With a curriculum based mostly around historical fiction, the class is grounded in the notion that not only should the reader constantly be searching for the truth in what he or she is reading, but that they must also determine whether or not what is true vs. what is untrue matters and, if so, why. Right now we’re reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, which is a pretty obvious but nonetheless perfect work to read when first employing this examination. In some ways, it’s been difficult, as this is probably my fourth time reading it, so I have to force myself to try and see it again through a new reader’s eyes instead of feeling my way comfortably through it with my lids half-closed (or instead of blatantly skipping parts… oh, that baby water buffalo) but nonetheless it’s been really exciting.
Last week we were given this assignment: Read “On the Rainy River” and “Why Study History?” Log 5: Tell two stories from your personal history: one that actually happened and one that is not-quite-true, but both of which make a similar point. Which one is more insightful about you? Why?
In the end, this is what I came up with. Very rough, but nonetheless:
Journal V: Two Tales
I.
Growing up, my brother and I went without a lot of things that, years later, we would realize were actually kind of standard in the lives of other families with kids. Rarely did we have candy. Never once was the beach or an amusement park considered a viable family vacation destination, as our parents opted instead to enlist us all in grueling cross-country hiking trips that sometimes spanned up to twelve or fifteen miles a day. But the most striking one of all was our lack of television, simply because in our household, it was never really deemed necessary.
While we did eventually get a TV set when I was about six, there were really only three forms of entertainment when we were kids until then: reading books, playing outside, and staring at the fish tank. The tank, a monolith that took up half of the living room wall and housed around twenty fish, was one of my greatest sources of pleasure in life. There was nothing better than coming home from school on a rainy or cold day and lying on the floor to gaze up at the darting flashes of rainbow zipping through the neon turquoise water. The tank was more than itself or the fish it contained; together, the entire combination was the highest form of art.
And then one bone-achingly cold day in January I ran into the house from the bus stop and was shocked to see the tank on its side, empty, on the ground. Letting out a scream that seemed yanked from the very tips of my toes, I ran around the houses looking for a parent, and adult, anyone at all to demand an explanation from. Finding no one, I ventured out into the backyard, and it was there, at last, I found my father, obscured by a stand of trees and kneeling next to the creek. Next to him was a giant bucket, and in that moment, though I didn’t know why, I knew who I had to blame.
He never really explained why he did what he had, past saying that fish "belonged in the water". But he told me that they were alright, of course they’d be fine, and that if I looked hard enough I’d be sure to see them. He moved out not long after that, and though his retreat wasn’t particularly surprising, the realization I came to months later that the tropical fish dumped in a frozen Pennsylvanian runoff stream were in no way still alive still was.
II.
Though I grew up without a lot of actual toys, I still considered myself luckier than almost any other kid I knew, because I had something even better: a gullible little brother. At barely a year younger than me, and with no other real playmates other than his sister in our home tucked in the boonies of northeastern Pennsylvania, my brother worshipped me the way only a disciple does: fully, and without thought. I could’ve told him to eat dirt and he would’ve done it. And then, one day, I did.
We’d been sitting in the front yard, digging around in the lilac trees my mother had just pruned, when the idea came to me. The soil was so rich, so thick, crackling and dark, it looked just like the creamy chocolate icing our grandmother slathered on her homemade black forest cakes. I could feel the drool pooling in the corners of my mouth, and yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to stoop down and scoop some into my mouth, afraid it wouldn’t meet my expectations. Instead, I turned to my steadfast sibling, all imperialism, and mandated the command.
At first he tried to disagree with me, telling me it was a bad idea to eat dirt and Mom would be mad. Even at five, he was cultivating his powers of reason, and yet at that point his adoration of me generally overpowered any hope his common sense ever had of prevailing. It didn’t take long to convince him that some days dirt tasted better than others, Mom would never have to find out, and the experience would be utterly worth it.
The look on his face when he took his first bite was fantastic; I was practically beside myself trying to keep from laughing at his prune-faced grimace. In that same instant I knew I couldn’t stop. I told him he just hadn’t taken a big enough bite; surely the next one would be better. Because he believed in me so much, he tried again, and again, and again, each time stepping up to my challenge with the understanding that if I were saying it to him, it must be true, that of course true things were the only kind people ever said to each other.
It wasn’t long after he stopped shoveling the damp earth down his throat that he began throwing up, and when he finally ended up in the ER and confessed the whole adventure to Mom, I got the worst spanking that I’d ever receive in my life. But even for all the punishment, I couldn’t help but think it was still a little bit worth it. If nothing else, I’d learned the extent of my powers.
***
The message of both stories? Be careful when lying to children, for they are rarely able to identify the truth, and therefore have that much more to lose.
***
The first of these stories is the true one; the second is based on a true event, but has an altered ending. I feel that each of these offers a possible insight about me in its own way; after all, I decided to tell both of them. However, I guess if I had to select one which offers more material for a psychological analysis, I would have to choose the second. The first is merely a retelling of events; it was a part of my life, and yet I had very little control over the actual situation itself. In the second story I had the opportunity to blatantly craft falsehoods, and I feel that the circumstances and story I deliberately chose to create of my own volition says much more about the inner workings of my mind than a simple recount of what has already occurred does.
***
So yeah. I love this class.
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