I have mailed out about 45 to 50 review copies of This Mobius Strip of Ifs. My son, friends and a few acquaintances have gotten copies as a kind of sharing, a giving of a kind. The book has crossed the pond, sailed to Bangalore and Malaysia and has reached Cathay, that mystical old name for China. After all, this book, all 164 pages, contains my personal failures and losses, “successes,” wild behaviors, blindness, folly, responses to death and dying, depression and demoralization for the past 50 some odd years. It is a time capsule of a kind, except you don’t have to wait until it is unearthed. Here it is, friend, see what you have.
The peculiar aspect of these essays is that they cover this and that inner and outer event in my life which is really a rigged writerly effort of paragraphs, assuming order, whatever that is, for each life experience worth retelling. It really is quite shaky, as I think of it. Configure all you want — configuration does not mean essence, nor the “truth.” Much like memory, an essay is a lie well told by a well-intended and very honest liar, oxymoronic.
By my age, as I reflect upon it, any story of the past, any reliable old memory is suspect, for if I am very honest with myself it refracts before me and here and there I have embellished it — lied to myself because of embarrassment, shame, vanity, and other nether and self-deceptive feelings. At uncomfortable moments I have caught myself in a self-made lie and it is personally unsettling. We configure memory to soothe ourselves, or to justify our acts. Any knowledgeable client in psychotherapy can easily tell you how he or she are soaked in the lather of fabricated memories. Sometimes shrinks become squeegees, “Do you want your windshield cleaned, mister?” So the book is a lie, honestly told. I imagine that is also a good definition of fiction.
Of the six reviews I have received four were most flattering and not too critical, but the last two shone a sharp eye on this and that detail so that I clenched my mental teeth and accepted that which was true (in need of more editing, to wit) or rejected that which I felt was narrow because the reviewer had her needs to slake. As Jane has told me repeatedly (my resistance is obdurate) if you write a book that you know consciously is controversial, especially my take on religion, bloggers, teachers and teaching don’t expect roses cast at your feet. Nevertheless, I have or I am still awash in self-delusion, having expectations which is a no no, especially when dealing with human beings, much less with bloggers. My capacity to feel wounded [see previous blog, March 8] has not been assuaged. And I give a knowing nod to that ancient quirk I have to expect goodness to follow because I have simply told the truth as best I can, to foolishly believe that being “naughty” is received with understanding. Somewhat wise, sophisticated, I believe, cosmopolitan, I know, I am also naive at moments and aint that quaint.
Solace is found in evolutionary psychology which is my latest reading fancy. How can I best say it: human beings, human expression is simply the response of genes attempting to replicate themselves in the most favorable conditions and they themselves are ordained — without consciousness or any determinism –to go on their merry way in our bodies like a rotating, revolving orb in the voids of space. In short we control nothing. And if that is so we each have to sort out the threads for our own existence — some of us will seek meaning, others religion to placate our psychic pain. I am just amused.
Epicurus who felt that philosophy was a kind of psychotherapy said it best in his epitaph. “I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.” Here is a man who could ride the carousel of genes forever and not take umbrage. Oh, to hear him speak under the Greek sky.
And the next scathing review I will receive I’ll recall Kazantzakis’s epitaph: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
When you are 71, besides reading the obit page, epitaphs take on a sad and yet satisfactory meaning.
