Learning to be honest, the World of Non

I think of myself as a pretty authentic person. I’m even trained in authenticity practices (Naropa University) as a writer, as an artist, as a person. Shit, I’ve used these practices for decades now in my art and work. I teach them. But I’ve found the peeling edges of what I thought was true. It’s covering not even the real thing but endless layers of reactions and responses to basic stuff: family dynamics, work situations, international living…TV shows…flamenco dancing. Me against the world or something like that. I’ve been fighting the whole time.

I’m writing an essay for someone else’s book where I have to reflect on a specific thread of experience that’s spanned three countries over 25 years. What I’ve been writing are stories I’ve told myself, my own version of a fairy tale, that kept me from seeing at least one giant, essential truth. Thankfully, I found that one. What other truths am I keeping from myself? That’s my question.

To prepare, I’m re-reading pertinent essays in this remarkable resource, Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call. Here’s one thing I’ve learned: I’ve been not only writing “non” fiction bs but thinking in the world of “non” too. I’ve been effectively living in perspectives, opinions, conclusions, even versions of experiences that I molded in response to what I thought things should add up to. Evidently, I didn’t trust what things were on their own so I relied on old tales.

I had become the 100 years of briar roses and the old briar patch, the tangled, thorny, overgrown, dangerous, shadowy, blockades of the fairy tales and Brer Rabbit’s territory. I am the fortress castle at the center of the mess. I am the trickster of my own self. I am the sleeping ingenue who started it. It was my own curse that did the trick. But I’m also the saviour Prince, the tar baby gotcha, the good fairy protection and the frustrated fox. I am also the wily rabbit with the briar patch as my first-known landscape. And after all, I am the creator of my stories, so if I can smell the fiction in my “non”, maybe I can find the truth right where it is.

Here’s to telling the truth. I’m trying. Wish me luck, I’m in over my head and the trickster is near.