We all create our own versions of the truth. That's just the way the human mind works. My truth is different from your truth is different from Donald Trump's truth. Okay, Donald wouldn't recognize the truth if it walked up and bit him in the ass, so perhaps that's not a good comparison. But you understand what I mean. Truth is a slippery creature.
Sharon Olds writes discuses some truths about her sister and herself . . .
The Sisters of Sexual Treasure
by: Sharon Olds
mother's house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate
her tiny sparrow body and narrow
grasshopper legs. The men's bodies
were like our father's body! The massive
hocks, flanks, thighs, male
structure of the hips, knees, calves–
we could have him there, the steep forbidden
buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock
in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.
Like explorers who
discover a lost city, we went
nuts with joy, undressed the men
slowly and carefully, as if
uncovering buried artifacts that
proved our theory of the lost culture:
that if Mother said it wasn't there,
it was there.
Basically, Olds and her sister are rebelling against their upbringing--religiously strict (both her parents being "hellfire Calvinists"), sheltered, sexually repressed, emotionally and physically abusive. Once they are freed from those shackles, they wallow in all the behaviors that their mother and father discouraged.
I don't think I ever rebelled as strongly against my upbringing. Sure, I stopped attending Mass for a few years after I graduated from high school. Yes, I may have consumed more than my fair share of illicit substances during that time (mainly weed). No, I didn't go sexually crazy. (Given the opportunity, I probably would have.) Compared to Olds girls, my initial forays into adulthood were pretty tame. Boring even.
Of course, that’s how I remember that time in my life. Someone else who knew me in my undergraduate days may have totally different recollections. Perhaps I was completely out of control. Maybe I was a complete dick to some people. Or, conversely, perhaps I was the model student, non-confrontational and hardworking. (I did graduate summa cum laude, so . . . there is that.). My guess is that I was somewhere in between those two polarities.
My point is that memory, I think, is a combination of truth and wishful thinking. Verifiable fact and exaggeration/outright lies. I truly believe that Donald Trump, as he’s standing in front of a microphone, actually believes the shit that is coming out of his mouth. In his addled mind, he thinks he’s the best President of the United States since Abraham Lincoln. Hell, he probably thinks he’s better than Abe. If you tell lies about yourself your whole life, eventually, you’re going to have a hard time sifting fact from fiction.
I’m not saying life is a True/False quiz. Far from it. Life (and memory) are more nuanced than that. There’s all kinds of gray areas, and it’s in those spaces that we all exist. We’re the greatest poets in the world, AND the shittiest poets in the world. The best President of the United States, AND the worst President of the United States. Mike Brady, AND Al Bundy. We’re the best AND worst versions of ourselves, depending on the day, time, and circumstance.
Currently, I’m the worst blogger in the world. AND the best.
Saint Marty wrote this poem tonight about the unreliability of memory, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem where every line but one is a lie. See what amazing stories you can make up, then offer one interesting thing that actually happened to you. Allow yourself to be as creative as you can without sounding as if you're lying. For example, instead of saying, "I was once a movie star" maybe write that you were an extra in the movie Forrest Gump. Remember to include specific details in your lies so they seem more realistic.
True or False
by: Martin Achatz
A tarantula once bit my toe,
and it swelled to the size
of an Anjou pear. I ate a pickled
mouse on a dare after smoking
16 ounces of Nicaraguan weed
16 ounces of Nicaraguan weed
at a friend's Halloween party.
I shoveled manure on a dairy
farm an entire summer, wallowed
knee-deep in its sweet perfume,
held it in my hair, on my skin
the way my first girlfriend's neck
held Love's Baby Soft so strong
it blinded me when I pressed
it blinded me when I pressed
my mouth to her nape, tasted
her on my tongue all day long like
bubblegum. I found a six-foot snake
in my toilet bowl one morning, coiled
so neatly it could have been
a green electrical cord hanging
above my dad's work bench.
My brother shot a deer on Thanksgiving.
It was so big, after he gutted it,
he stuffed me inside its chest
cavity the way Han shoved Luke
inside the belly of the Tauntaun.
It smelled like summer blueberries
and blood. When I was 13, I spent
two or three days in a coma--I don't
remember exactly how long. What I do
remember: a nothing like a snow
storm, being erased, swallowed,
as if God made a mistake
on a pop quiz and was changing
his answer from True to False.
❤️
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