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I can’t tell my story, or the parts of my story that I’m going to try to tell, without also telling parts of their stories. There’s too much overlap, too many occurrences one or the other of them set in motion, intentionally or unintentionally, and there’s no point doing this thing if all I can manage is a lie. Which is not to say every word will be factual. Only that every word will be true. Or as true as I can manage.
I find that I’m quickly, unexpectedly coming to realize that I’m trying to tell myself a story in a language that I’m having to invent as I go along.
“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. And that is precisely why many of them [Americans] are afraid of fantasy.”
I think of myself as a painter, because painting is what I love to do, what I’m passionate about. So, I’m a painter.”
“Duality. The mutability of the flesh. Transition. Having to hide one’s true self away. Masks. Secrecy. Mermaids, werewolves, gender. The reactions we may have to the truth of things, to someone’s most honest face, to facts that run counter to our expectations and preconceptions. Confessions. Metaphors. Transformation.
when the story is a spiral, or spirals set within spirals?
It is. I know it is. I know it is. I know.
3
Dead people and dead thoughts and supposedly dead moments are never, ever truly dead, and they shape every moment of our lives. We discount them, and that makes them mighty.
I say things that are not true because I need them to be true. This is what liars and foolish people do. As Anne Sexton almost said, “Belief is not quite need.”
What I knew and didn’t know, it didn’t have anything to do with this ghost story, which was Abalyn’s and not mine. Not mine at all. Except, the bit about changelings, because of what had happened already and what would happen. Seeing an illusion, put there to deceive or protect me, but either way to conceal the truth (or just the facts). Butler Hospital changing its name. Eva and Eva, July and November. The Drowning Girl and all those terrible paintings and sculptures Perrault made. In hindsight, as Abalyn said, all these come down to changelings, don’t they?
It begins to feel like my perception of time is collapsing back on itself, compressing events and recollections.
rats live on no evil star.
Palindrome
What if she learned her lesson, that wolves are not safe from men, but women are just a little safer from men,
I am a fool to even try. I am a fool. I am.
My stories shape-shift like mermaids and werewolves. A lycanthropy of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, subjects and predicates, and so on and so forth.
