Truth Shmuth

What if truth was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?

Pardon my ridiculousness. I just felt the urge to be silly. Because honestly, I find the question "what is truth" as silly as the lyrical questions above. I have my opinions about nonfiction and judging from the general comments in class, you probably won't like them. Don't worry. I'm not asking you to. Your agreement or disagreement won't make my ideas any less true to me.

Personally, I think metaphorical truth is MORE real than factual truth. Shocked? Good. Let me explain. Last night I had a dream about my old elementary school. It was not a reproduction of a literal experience, but it captured the truth of my complex emotions about childhood. Like all dreams, it was an metaphorical exploration of the truth I extract from life's overwhelming details. And that truth, that essential core of my experiences matters more than the sum of the facts that created it. I have the same opinion about memoirs. The facts don't matter as much as the emotional truth that emerges from them.

I hate discussing "what is nonfiction" because I think that writing truth, like dreaming, is extremely personal. Only you know when you're tapping into the essence of your life and only you know when you're exaggerating. Most people don't seem to like that idea of morality being personal. We live in a mirky age that craves absolutes. So we satisfy ourselves with calculating gravity, predicting the weather, and striving the categorize the massive world around us. But when it comes to the unique universe between our ears, sorry math majors, but you can't measure that.

So do me a favor. Don't tell me if I'm telling my life truthfully. Critique the art I use to convey truth, but do not question my sense of truthfulness. I have a sensitive conscience that squeals sharp chords when I lie. I don't need you as a truth policeman. And guess what? You don't need me as one either. Change the trivial facts if it helps guide me to the emotional truth. I don't care if you tell me you wore a red shirt when you actually wore a white one. I don't care if you tell me you brother was sitting when really he was lying down. Why you would lie about that is beyond me, but if your conscience doesn't beep furiously with alarm, then I trust that it's part of your metaphorical story. And that's okay with me. Just make me feel what you felt. Keep that core, that essence, that personal truth and it will be true to me too.

When I wrote my memoir, I always tried to keep my eye on that vital emotional truth. At one point, I talk about a very vivid childhood memory. But the thing is, I was seven years old, so even though the emotions are vivid, the factual details blur in my mind. So what did I do? I imagined I was seven years old again. I tapped into that vivid emotion, and tried to reconstruct a skin over the memory's soul. And from what I hear in my responses, it was my most effective moment of my memoir. Do I feel guilty for recreating my Dad's dialogue? Hell no. Using my own intuition, I chose things my Dad would say. Without concrete facts, I could still explore the more important truth of who my Dad is and how he made me feel.

You truth fundamentalists may be scowling at the screen right now. You're probably taking my argument to the extreme, thinking "Well using your logic, one could completely fabricate a memory and claim it still conjured that emotional truth!" Let me defend myself. Firstly, I seriously doubt that anyone but a sociopath would claim that a story ungrounded in any type of fact is nonfiction. Secondly, I doubt that without some important facts, a writer is capable of tapping into that emotional truth of a memory. And thirdly, my argument isn't grounded in logic but human intuition. That probably makes you hard-core fact addicts cringe even more.

Well, go right ahead and cringe. I respect that your consciences differs from mine. But don't think that I'm a liar because I value the metaphorical truth more than the literal truth. In creative nonfiction, I think there should be an ambience of trust in each other's intuition. Otherwise, we may slip into the philosophical swamp of whose truth is truer, creating an atmosphere as tense as witch-hunting puritan times. Let's not burn each other on philosophical stakes. Let's accept that though we walk different roads, we still desire to arrive at the same place. After all, that desire to find truth is what makes us writers in the first place, right?