I didn’t mean to lie.
In fact,
I didn’t realize that I had lied
until I was driving home.
As I turned west off the main highway, twilight bloomed:
sudden velvet: a black iris sky.
It was in that moment that the truth struck me.
I am still having nightmares, even though I told you that I am not.
In fact, I had one last night that took most of this day to shake;
I spent I don’t know how much energy trying to ignore how angry and helpless I felt in the dream. I told you that my dreams were mostly entertaining; it seemed completely true to me at the time. The memory of the nightmare, shrunk into a tiny corner of my mind; it seemed insignificant and so far away.
It would have been rude to waste your time with something trivial, something I'd worked hard to forget.
So even though you pressed me, gently, asking the question in a slightly different way, my answer was the same.
“No." I beamed. "My dreams are technicolored and entertaining. It’s like going to the movies. I get the whole range of shows: comedy, drama…” I started to say horror and mystery too, but that would have been too complicated for such a short conversation.
I didn’t mean to lie; I was just trying not to muddy the waters.
And my dreams are funny and dramatic, sometimes.
A similar, but not quite the same thing happened when I was talking to one of my children. We were talking about how traumatic it is for a child to suffer one form of loss after another. We were talking about pets. I said, “Well, you guys only had one cat that died.”
She said, “No we didn’t! What about…” And she began to name the cats that we have lost over the years, and not only the cats, but all the pets we have lost and grieved.
How could my mind pass over truth like that? I was not trying to deny the truth. Why was I unable to see certain parts of our shared past that were so vivid to my daughter?
Of course, before the words were completely out of her mouth I remembered. For a moment everything was clear, the way a windshield is clear seconds after the blade swishes left to right. How long does it take for the raindrops to obscure the view again? For that interval I could see and feel the whole truth.
It shimmered.
Once I had a Garfield comic strip that I pinned to the wall in my yoga room. In it Garfield was staring at a blank, white screen, obviously wondering what all the fuss was about. Then his (human) sidekick comes and pulls the shade. A bright, sunny day appears and Garfield says, “I knew that.”
Trauma may very well cause a person’s memory to fracture, but why is mine still so, I don’t know, separated like a pane of stained glass?
Everyone has a certain amount of changeability when it comes to remembering the truth; by its nature memory is elastic and slippery; is perception more of an art than a science?
As the sky was losing its velvet, I wondered how to tell what is true.
Wondering made me want to tell it better.
In fact,
I didn’t realize that I had lied
until I was driving home.
As I turned west off the main highway, twilight bloomed:
sudden velvet: a black iris sky.
It was in that moment that the truth struck me.
I am still having nightmares, even though I told you that I am not.
In fact, I had one last night that took most of this day to shake;
I spent I don’t know how much energy trying to ignore how angry and helpless I felt in the dream. I told you that my dreams were mostly entertaining; it seemed completely true to me at the time. The memory of the nightmare, shrunk into a tiny corner of my mind; it seemed insignificant and so far away.
It would have been rude to waste your time with something trivial, something I'd worked hard to forget.
So even though you pressed me, gently, asking the question in a slightly different way, my answer was the same.
“No." I beamed. "My dreams are technicolored and entertaining. It’s like going to the movies. I get the whole range of shows: comedy, drama…” I started to say horror and mystery too, but that would have been too complicated for such a short conversation.
I didn’t mean to lie; I was just trying not to muddy the waters.
And my dreams are funny and dramatic, sometimes.
A similar, but not quite the same thing happened when I was talking to one of my children. We were talking about how traumatic it is for a child to suffer one form of loss after another. We were talking about pets. I said, “Well, you guys only had one cat that died.”
She said, “No we didn’t! What about…” And she began to name the cats that we have lost over the years, and not only the cats, but all the pets we have lost and grieved.
How could my mind pass over truth like that? I was not trying to deny the truth. Why was I unable to see certain parts of our shared past that were so vivid to my daughter?
Of course, before the words were completely out of her mouth I remembered. For a moment everything was clear, the way a windshield is clear seconds after the blade swishes left to right. How long does it take for the raindrops to obscure the view again? For that interval I could see and feel the whole truth.
It shimmered.
Once I had a Garfield comic strip that I pinned to the wall in my yoga room. In it Garfield was staring at a blank, white screen, obviously wondering what all the fuss was about. Then his (human) sidekick comes and pulls the shade. A bright, sunny day appears and Garfield says, “I knew that.”
Trauma may very well cause a person’s memory to fracture, but why is mine still so, I don’t know, separated like a pane of stained glass?
Everyone has a certain amount of changeability when it comes to remembering the truth; by its nature memory is elastic and slippery; is perception more of an art than a science?
As the sky was losing its velvet, I wondered how to tell what is true.
Wondering made me want to tell it better.
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