The Truth

I must say that the first place my mind moves to when I think about this subject is post-modern and post-structural literary theory's assertion that simply (perhaps too much so), there is no truth. I'm loathe to open up that debate here, and so other than its cursory previous mention, I'm content to let that particular sleeping dog lie.

I'm much more interested in why—and how—we value truth. I, for one, am not concerned with accuracy when I tell a story. Many of the stories—however plausible they may seem—that I tell simply did not happen; they are, as one might say, "made up." At the risk of deviating too far from the path of my discussion, I'd like to momentarily examine the act of calling a fabricated story "made up." It is not entirely pejorative or positive; children enjoy "make believe" and made-up stories, but a pained exclamation of "He made the whole thing up!" upon being deceived certainly carries its own venom. "Made up," however, is neither damning nor comforting; it simply denotes creation—with a touch of the ethereal. "Made" is literally a term of construction and denotes the presence of a new object (i.e. the one that has been made). This presence, quite naturally, heightens awareness of an absence—one that most probably existed before the new object was made. In contrast to expression of physically making something (i.e. a chair is simply made), fictions are made up, and the expression contains a direction. We can, therefore, begin to give these presences and absences a literal place. If a story has been made up, then this new fabrication, this new presence, has replaced an absence that was formerly "up," and the presence has come from below.

We do not think of stories as having come from below us, but from within us, and so to take too literally the notion that the story has come "up" might make the concept too abstract. By tempering, however, the notion of below with the more acceptable (and perhaps logical) notion of a story coming from within, then we are left with a new location in which to place the story before it is "made up:" the bottoms within us, the depths of ourselves. To "make up" a story, then, is not simply a matter of creation, but of literally digging within to pull from inside a small bit of ourselves (the image of regurgitation is both too unpleasant and sadly too accurate here) and with this small piece, beginning to expel the absences and voids of reality.

It is for this reason that I do not believe that my stories, however made up, are deceptive in any way; I see them more as a personal crusade against the emptiness of reality. Nevertheless, many people cannot help but feel deceived when they find out that a story they have taken for reality is actually fiction, and they dismiss the story as simply not true.

I propose that a story's truth is not in any way related to whether or not it is real. The act of "making up," of expunging the absences of reality, creates more than a story: it creates emotion, it fills voids not just in reality but within ourselves. The resulting laughter, tears, anger, and catharsis might just happen to be the only truth in this world. Even "reality" is not burdened by the constraints of "truth;" we understand reality only through our five senses, which can be deceived. The only things we can rely upon without constant questioning are our own laughter and tears; they are the only things we know are true.