nathan’s Reviews > An Oral History of Atlantis > Status Update

“All poetry is accuracy,” she said.

Thought and Memory sigh in their sleep, dreaming their way through

“It’s a cliché because it’s true,” one of us noted sagely.
To our surprise, Dublinski gave what most cultures would decode as a nod. “You could say that ‘It’s a cliché because it’s true’ is itself a cliché because it’s true.” “Excuse me, Professor Dublinski?”

I thank her, give a slight bow, and shake my head. I say in Korean, I’m fine, and for the rest of the ride at least, I am. When she leaves I give her the folded piece of paper from my pocket and say mysteriously, Open it later. I don’t remember what it says, just know that I’ll remember her the rest of my life. It’s the last poem I ever write.

I’ve only skimmed the first chapter, about an actress who starred in a string of B-movies before her rejection of acting as a “falseness upon a falseness”—the second falseness being life itself.

“What if the story of your life, the one that you keep telling yourself, is not the right story?” He said to imagine a book in which the chapters could be read in any order, or skipped, erased, rewritten.

His hands were in fists. His face was like a fist. His legs flexed angrily, somehow also fistlike, under cargo shorts emblazoned with Fuxing Normal’s insignia, which looks like a city rising from the waves. Or sinking. Or maybe it’s just some buildings by the water. His strong chest filled out a faded black polo shirt. He looked more or less like his Gmail portrait.

“All time travel is essentially Oedipal.”