Category Archives: Narrative

History Lies

I’ve been asked at several points in my life by acquaintances and friends why I don’t write about past events, periods of life, etc. Was just reading this bit in The Paris Review by Karl Ove Knausgaard from his new book The Land of the Cyclops and it made sense to me.

As such, history always lies, it turns what was inconsistent, all over the place, perhaps even meaningless, into something consistent, systematic, and meaningful. The situations and events that occurred, the people who were there, and the discussions between them were of course real, it is not the case that writing about something is the same as lying or distorting, but the moment that reality is written down it is given a form that is basically abiding and unalterable, which pins it down in a certain way, whereas what was significant about it was that it was all over the place and could not be pinned down at all. To write about a situation is to take out part of its potential, at the same time as its remaining potential disappears into the shadows of the unsaid, the unthought, and the unwritten, in the valley of opportunities lost.

– Karl Ove Knausgaard

NYE 2020

An old friend of mine – I’ve forgotten which one – used to say he never liked New Year’s. He called it ‘forced fun’, like a ‘fake holiday’. People felt compelled to do something. I’ve tended to agree with the sentiment for the most part. The obvious idea being that the calendar – at least the one we’re using – is quite arbitrary and scientifically speaking with regards to ‘time’ no two years are exactly the same length anyway, but I’m not going to bother Googling links to all that stuff, you can do that yourself if you want, trying to stay up past an arbitrary deadline.

I posted a note last year about this very thing and I find it rings true even more so with each passing arbitrary time measurement unit (day).

So if I have a New Year’s Tradition at all, it’s that for the last at least 15 years or so – in the process of trying (with various levels of success) to stay up until midnight, mostly because the kids feel like this is a big deal – – I head out into my backyard to let the dog do his thing at some point and stare up at the sky and ponder my place in the Universe.

This year it turned out a little differently. After the wife and kids and I ate a whole bunch of little hot dogs wrapped in croissant dough, I wandered out as I usually do and said to myself, “well, Self, this is when you annually walk out here and stare at the sky and ponder your place in the Universe.”

Then I paused for a minute. Then I thought, “can I ponder my place IN the Universe, when I also AM the Universe?” Can you be IN something you AM?

Kinda stumped myself there.

And it’s only 11:16. Guess my new year starts now.

Might need a new tradition next year, but I’ve got some time to sort that out.