TRUTH FROM AN ORDINARY CHILDHOOD
by Graham Campbell
It is now almost twenty years ago that I wrote the first draft of my story about the Birch Trees for a memoir. A forest existed near my home in the middle of the small city. One summer I went there alone almost every day craving the natural setting of pheasants, rabbits, snakes, and trees, especially a grove of birch trees which to me were sacred. Soon after the city destroyed them all by building two schools, and three athletics fields right there. But before the city crushed my forest, friends betrayed me by hacking up the trees in my sanctuary chopping many them down. It was as though a horde of barbarians had desecrated my world.
When I first wrote the story, I was convinced it was absolutely true, historically accurate, an event that occurred in the external world. It described an incident that occurred entirely outside of my own head and had nothing to do with my imagination. (Other than my fantasies of hacking them up with a sword which as the new King Arthur I would weld with great power.)
I still believe it is true, faithful to the facts of my life, but it may never have happened. The forest was real and my love for the trees was real but much of the rest may have been real internally. It is not simply a misremembered story but a mythic portrayal of what occurred often enough to become my reality. It captures the truth of my relationship with peers perfectly.
A story does not have to have happened in the material, observable, tangible world to be true. I didn’t make it up, invent it or imagine it even though now I wonder if it took place. But it speaks the truth of my utter lack of power in my life, to the truth of my inner being, to my distrust of other humans and preference for trees which I still maintain.
The story has to be true. I don’t write fiction. Or perhaps I do, perhaps we all do.
Truth speaks in the story. The once tightly held boundary between truth and fiction keeps shifting. What was once a border, very solid, built with bricks and cement now seems permeable and uncertain like everything else.
The older I get the more I see that all I really know is the truth of inner experience which may or may not correspond to something called the external world. The Zen Master Teacher Shunryu Suzuki was asked by a student, “How much ego do we need?” He responded, “Enough to not walk in front of a bus.” In my life I have mostly avoided oncoming busses and other impermeable things.
Perhaps the distinctions between truth and fiction, real and not real, fantasy and reality, are a fabrication. Perhaps it is a distinction without a difference. Or a difference without a knowable difference. It would be easy to get lost in more of those kinds of words.
Today, I sometimes believe that reality is a steaming hot cup of morning tea, which I want to cradle in the palm of my hand. Words and stories are a cloth under the cup that protects me from the heat without denying it. Perhaps it is just enough ego to not get burned.
When I first wrote the story, I was convinced it was absolutely true, historically accurate, an event that occurred in the external world. It described an incident that occurred entirely outside of my own head and had nothing to do with my imagination. (Other than my fantasies of hacking them up with a sword which as the new King Arthur I would weld with great power.)
I still believe it is true, faithful to the facts of my life, but it may never have happened. The forest was real and my love for the trees was real but much of the rest may have been real internally. It is not simply a misremembered story but a mythic portrayal of what occurred often enough to become my reality. It captures the truth of my relationship with peers perfectly.
A story does not have to have happened in the material, observable, tangible world to be true. I didn’t make it up, invent it or imagine it even though now I wonder if it took place. But it speaks the truth of my utter lack of power in my life, to the truth of my inner being, to my distrust of other humans and preference for trees which I still maintain.
The story has to be true. I don’t write fiction. Or perhaps I do, perhaps we all do.
Truth speaks in the story. The once tightly held boundary between truth and fiction keeps shifting. What was once a border, very solid, built with bricks and cement now seems permeable and uncertain like everything else.
The older I get the more I see that all I really know is the truth of inner experience which may or may not correspond to something called the external world. The Zen Master Teacher Shunryu Suzuki was asked by a student, “How much ego do we need?” He responded, “Enough to not walk in front of a bus.” In my life I have mostly avoided oncoming busses and other impermeable things.
Perhaps the distinctions between truth and fiction, real and not real, fantasy and reality, are a fabrication. Perhaps it is a distinction without a difference. Or a difference without a knowable difference. It would be easy to get lost in more of those kinds of words.
Today, I sometimes believe that reality is a steaming hot cup of morning tea, which I want to cradle in the palm of my hand. Words and stories are a cloth under the cup that protects me from the heat without denying it. Perhaps it is just enough ego to not get burned.