I could tell you about myself, but why?
Wouldn’t it all just be lies anyway?
I mean, none of us are ever really
as anything as we want to be.
None of us are ever as capable
of honesty as we think we are.
And, just perhaps,
this is the beginning.
A Prayer Like Gravity
Mundus vult decipi
A Prayer Like Gravity 
You are doing a bit of ‘self discovery’ it seems, look forward to more and a very unusual shot.
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Thanks Jen. It gets weirder from here…
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good can’t wait 😉
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We are our words, in the end. We speak through them, and how they are strung together paints the portrait of who we have become.
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Indeed, and sometimes
the words are all we have,
sometimes the portrait is painted
with shards of reflected glass…
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Your last comment makes me think of an Ansel Adams portrait of a friend seen reflected (and in reflection) in shards of a mirror.
Very cool how the photo changes depending on how the eyes focus. But I hate thinking that I am my words, such a feeble construct. Surely I am much more than that?
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I think perhaps Trent meant that somewhat figuratively. At least that’s the way I took him. For my part, I was thinking more of the illusive and elusive nature of “identity,” especially as it relates to this whole digital/internet/blogging thing. How much does my image (the idea of me that you hold in your head) have to do with “reality” except in how much of that reality I choose to share? And how reliable of a narrator am even I if and when I choose to be? How certain can anyone be of any of this?
Oh DAmn! There I go, getting all morassive. Damn my existentialist tendencies.
I have also been thinking about how these things relate to non-literate and even non-verbal persons. How does their sense (do their senses) of identity differ from ours. If their’s is not built so much of words as ours is, then of what is it built, or are words more like the mortar between the bricks of our experiences? And then what would a non-verbal person use for mortar?
There are many more faces to come, so hopefully (maybe?) things will make more sense as we go.
Thank you for your questions. This is exactly what I wanted from posting these, I think. These are things that can best be understood in and with many voices. Even the voice in these “false faces” is not necessarily my own, or at least the one that I am using right now, here and in my poetry. These things are in constant flux.
Thanks Jilanne–
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You might be interested in a post I wrote in May 2012
http://jilannehoffmann.com/2012/05/08/the-webs-warp-and-woof-12/
i’m thinking there’s got to be literature, studies, etc. out there that will answer that question. Surely Helen Keller provided insight at some point, perhaps in her writings, knowing that she did not have language at her service until later in her childhood.
I know that I am not a reliable narrator–just ask my family. But then, there are as many worlds as there are human beings. 😀
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I seem to remember Miss Keller speaking (hah!) of such things. Not sure when the road of writing will take me in that direction, but I am curious where that road leads…
I wonder if this is what we may mean when we say things like “integrity,”: not how reliable we are as narrators as much as how aware we are of the inevitable unreliability of our narrations, having at least some idea of the scale of our own reliability but giving it a good show anyway.
And I’ll see your post (which I greatly appreciate) and raise you one critical essay that I know you will find as fascinating as I did:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/246914
“…as many worlds…” !!! Have you been reading my journals? I swear I wrote almost these exact words not too long ago. Have to see if I can dig them up.
Peace–
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Oh and false face 2 is up, with many more to follow over the next few weeks.
Thank you for your interest. I really do appreciate it, especially since I seem to have scared off at least half of my readership. 😉
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finished the essay. It’s killer. Yes, this has been bothering me for awhile now. Folks who think poetry must be autobiographical. It’s so limiting. I think anyone who invents, be it prose or poetry, is just as “brave” (perhaps more because they can’t fall back on that old saw “well it really happened that way”) as one who relates a personal experience “unflinchingly.” Would love to write more, but the witching hour approaches, and I have a real life to live in the morning. 😀 Stay tuned….
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I so agree–I’ve been thinking lately, especially where this False Face thing has been taking me, that even when I write a poem in first person, in what I believe to be my own voice, as soon as it’s written, at least as soon as it is seen/read/heard, at that moment, it is no longer my own–no longer “about me.”
Yes–I got your station locked into the dial–
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And also–not sure if you’d noticed the tag-line on my blog:
“Mundus vult decipi”
“The world wishes to be deceived.”
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Ah yes, we all see what we want to see, don’t we?
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More often than not sometimes.
(Did that sentence really make any sense? Sounded good as I was typing it, but…)
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nothing ‘perhaps’ about it …
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…but there are so many ‘perhaps’s’ about me, sometimes they make me dizzy…
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but who is the constant ‘me’ who is made dizzy by them?
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Nought but another ‘perhaps’
or perhaps a ‘perhaps not’–
Smoke and mirrors,
beams of light and
motes of dust
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*cough*
excuse m-…
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Yeah…sorry…haven’t cleaned the attic in a while, and mind that door, that leads to the belfry, currently occupied I’m afraid.
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‘currently occupied I’m afraid’ !!!
how did you know I down-sized from a Cave to a Belfry – are you my alter-ego’s alter-ego; c’mon own up I’m going crazy under this cowl!
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You could tell me about yourself, and I
promise I won’t be looking for the lie
I mean, I like your stories anyway
words free us to be anything we want to be.
So let’s not worry too much
About honesty…
🙂 FatW
.
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