Facebook Sedition 2: I Gotta D'Agata

Yesterday I responded on Facebook to a blog posting about John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain. The posting was very astute – it was, after all, written by one of the preeminent teachers and writers of creative nonfiction essay. I, however, stated my ambivalence and said I understood D’Agata’s point that facts in creative non-fiction don’t always have to be absolutely accurate. It’s not journalism and it’s not biography. And in terms of writing a disclaimer of such in the form of a preface in order to alert the reader, well, I thought that was akin to a TV program alert that states, “Don’t do this at home,” as if the audience is too dumb to figure that out.  If you are reading memoir, then you might suppose that some things are not 100% accurate, or as my mother-in-law says, “Why you gotta tell every little fart (pronounced “faht”)?”

With D’Agata’s book, I remember feeling like I was in on the secret as I read it – his writing sounded reportorial yet I sensed his play and exaggeration of certain things as the book went on. Besides, as I flippantly pointed out, his omission of the preface allowed him to publish two books rather than just one.

My post was removed minutes later. It’s removal put me in a stew.

One of the other posters asked me (after my post was removed) if I wouldn’t be upset if the date of a loved one’s passing was changed to make the story better. I said no, but, maybe upon thinking about it, I would be upset if the date was wrong in the loved one’s obituary, which, by the way, would be written at the time of the passing and not as a memory.

Thinking about it more, I realize that I always remember the date of Ronald’s and my first meeting as January 20, 1976. Thirty-two years later (I had that as thirty years originally, but I didn’t want you to think I was lying – it was December 2007) as we were packing to move south, I pulled out all my old journals (and shredded them! My God, I was histrionic!), and happened to come across the date that we actually met. To tell you the truth, I still don’t remember it, and for always in my mind, it will be January 20, 1976. Am I lying? And does it matter what the exact date was? I don’t actually say the date in my memoir, and many other dates are just referred to as spring of 1978 or winter of whatever. I’m terrible at dates. Ask any of my friends and they will tell you I’ve called them and said, “I know you have a birthday sometime around now. Did I miss it?” I changed majors in undergraduate school from journalism to drama (and then finally to English education) just because the facts didn’t particularly interest me. I was more into the human aspect of the story, and I still am.

When the human aspect is considered, facts get blurry. Just sit at the table of any family reunion and listen to variations of the same family story. “No, it wasn’t Uncle Tony, it was Uncle Joe,” or “No, they didn’t go fishing, they went hunting.” Or what about the stories that never really happened, but they’ve been told so many times they have become family lore? Are they lying? No, because memories become truth and our memories are faulty and changeable.  They are dependent on so many things, as elucidated in my last post, and I didn’t even list all the variables that impact how an event is remembered.

Isn’t that what readers are seeking when they read memoir? Don’t they want to learn of that particular author’s perspective on events in his/her life? And do the particularities – the truths or facts – really matter, if the story is placed in context and in time and the author elicits feeling? Did you really believe everything you read in Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club? Didn’t the title hint at least a little that she was a member of the club she wrote about? It didn’t make me like the book less.

Facts will always matter to some people, of course, but not to all. I’ve learned I can’t please everyone, but I can work at pleasing myself through my most honest and heartfelt literary representation of my story.

Maybe all that thinking isn’t what got my post deleted. Perhaps it was my audacity at posting my blog’s URL. I didn’t realize that it would post a giant photo of me and look like an ad. I’m not technically proficient in social media, and I swear I’ve posted the URL before and it was just an address. I posted it because I had touched on D’Agata in my own post that week. It was relevant to the discussion, even if not as astute as the preeminent writer/teacher’s post.

An agent, the one I stopped contact with because she wanted me to rewrite my memoir as some sort of exposé, told me that I had to build a social media presence. Was I wrong to post my URL? Did I overstep some invisible barrier? Did it have to do with the social media hierarchy of who’s who? Classism? Elitism? Yes, the preeminent writer/teacher has credentials, many credentials. He is well respected and sought after. Do I not know my place?

I have a few credentials, too, but I don’t refer to them much because why do they really matter? They were degrees and milestones I wanted to accomplish. Do they make me smarter? Am I a better person for having completed them? Two of the smartest people I ever knew were my parents, and neither one graduated high school.

My first and greatest credential is that I am a fellow human being. One thing I learned over the years is that I don’t assume anything about anyone, which is why I’m trying really hard not to assume I know why preeminent writer/teacher deleted my post.

When I sold jewelry on commission in retail, I was one of the few associates who did not size up potential customers. I treated people with exactly the same attention whether they planned to spend $1.99 or $1,999.00.  Oftentimes the very people that other associates snubbed ended up spending the most money. It was the human interaction and the chance to be of service to another that motivated and excited me. It didn’t make me the best sales associate by a long shot, if commissions were the only measure, but it made my customers feel valued and me feel good. All humans deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, even when they sometimes make it difficult to do so. Social media was supposed to be the great equalizer, but it is not.

There’s the rub. When we talk about truth and facts in the social media world, how many people present their lives truthfully? They are already editing and altering their life stories by what they post and what they don’t. Some create whole personas and life stories, often for bad intent. We live in an untruthful world because we are human and flawed. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t help that we view the world through a particular lens or that our memories are fluid or that we are inherently selfish and egocentric. Every major historical event comes down to someone’s ego being offended, and don’t even start me on how biased history is. Or how blatantly politicians lie to gain supporters. Talk about untruths!

How I feel about people is my greatest ambivalence. I have a strong motivation to serve. Yet people disappoint, and I know I disappoint them. All we can do is listen to another’s stories with respect, an open heart, and an open mind, just as they are told to us, whether orally, written, or through action, art, music and dance.  The way they are told and what is told are as important as the stories themselves, lies and omissions not excepted.  They define who we are and give us common ground. They are the great equalizer.

Reality Check

I’m swimming in the muck of my emotions this week. It’s tiring and I can’t see the shoreline. You might imagine that it sucks to be me lately. But I’m not feeling that. I’m all in for the journey. Sometimes I just let go and allow my feelings to sling some shit, and this is one of those times.

I think we are veering away from emotions lately except for anger maybe. I know lots of people who are angry. They’re angry we have a black president. They’re angry the dag gum government is making them pay taxes. They’re angry the dag gum government isn’t imposing Christian beliefs in the bedroom and in women’s vaginas. They’re angry because they can’t conceal weapons while picnicking in the state parks. They’re angry ethnic minorities are growing in numbers in our country. They’re angry because they are white and it doesn’t matter like it used to.

Others quash their emotions with drugs – prescription, legal or illegal. Then they don’t have to feel a thing.

Others keep it light: OMG, LMFAO, SMH (what does that even mean?).

Some live vicariously through reality TV. Okay, I admit my infatuation with it, but I promise you, I don’t inhale.

But why are we so fascinated? Do you remember the first reality show? It was called The American Family and it ran on PBS in 1973. I partook. The Louds, the family filmed for the show, claimed editing emphasized the negatives. Others thought they used the presence of the cameras as an opportunity to behave badly. Oldest son Lance came out in front of the cameras while mom Pat asked her husband Bill for a divorce.

The show led the way for other shows such as Real World that debuted on MTV. Now we are bombarded with reality shows, but I think reality has gone for a swim.

I watch three shows regularly: American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, and Dance Moms. I have partaken in occasional voyeurism with shows such as Toddlers & Tiaras, Dancing with the Stars, Pawn Stars, Call of the Wildman and a few others as well as several shows on HGTV. Aside from sometimes sapping my emotions and my intelligence (I can only hope they are regenerative), I can’t quite figure out why I am so drawn to these types of shows.

Maybe I am drawn because the shows are like memoir, aren’t they? They don’t show every agonizing moment, thank you very much, but edit it all down to fit into a defined time frame and particular topic or event. The dramatic content is there for effect, to make the viewer feel something.

The genre of memoir has felt the sting of slung shit. John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain, is in the ring of reality right now. He is defending his right to alter facts in order to serve the literary art of essay writing. Now he didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s how I perceive the fight. I read About a Mountain and I liked it, even as I came upon escalating statistics and variations of the truth. The book made me feel something. But I cannot say what I feel about the altering of verifiable facts because, as D’Agata argued, facts are often biased, just ask any politician. I’ve been guilty of it myself, and I can’t imagine a single one of you, readers, who can honestly say you’ve never used a fact that is purposely slanted to support what you wanted to say. Go back up to my paragraph on angry people. See what I mean?

My sister emailed me to tell me, among other things, that she read my post about our library visits when we were kids, but she told me I had the library wrong. It was not the NYS Public Library but the Harmonus Bleeker Library on Dove Street. She said she loved that place, too. Did it matter in my reminiscence that I got the library wrong? Is it considered an untruth because my child’s mind and my adult memory melded two places into one? I don’t think so. I recalled the feel of the place and the memory, and Peggy, my sister, knew exactly what I was talking about. As for the rest of you readers, does the exact place really matter?

So where does that leave truth and reality? We are mere humans, and truth is elusive because it will always be perceived through the lenses we wear. Those lenses are prescribed by ethnicity, culture, race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, education, religious beliefs, experience, nature and nurture. Reality? Still viewed and perceived through those same lenses. We are flawed. That’s why I don’t mind swimming in the muck every once in a while.

Here’s some reality for you, readers, from my memoir. And, no, I wasn’t there.

(Excerpt from Chapter 6: Being Black All by Myself, Salt and Pepper: A Memoir about Interracial Love – still waiting to hear your opinion on the title)

A week later Ronald was on overtime duty at Fire Station 6. They responded to a fire call at the parking garage of the hospital – smoke on the roof, origin unknown. A blizzard pelted the region, the accumulation of snow already over a foot. The temperature was somewhere in the teens. The smoke was heavy, the snow was heavy, and visibility was zero. Ronald and his partner carefully made their way through the snowy, smoky fog, looking for the source of the fire.

I had left work early to pick up my parents-in-law. Sylvester Sr. had an appointment for a biopsy of his prostate gland, and he would not be able to drive afterwards. Though I hated driving during a snowstorm, I wanted to be there for both Sylvester and Bertha.

Ronald found the source of the smoke and fire – the equipment room – and turned to head toward it when he slipped on hard packed snow, slid backwards, and fell. He suddenly felt water all around him. His seventy pounds of fire equipment dragged him down, down, down, below the surface, and he wondered if he would touch bottom. He did – seven feet down. He wore his breathing apparatus, and he pushed and fought his way back up. When he broke the surface, he found himself trapped in a watery, oily, debris-filled drainage pit with smooth concrete sides and the edge of the pit three feet above him. He closed his eyes.

“Tread water,” Ronald said in his mind, remembering the first time we took adult swim lessons and the instructor nicknamed him “the Rock” because he immediately sank to the bottom of the pool. Ronald could not reach his radio and stay afloat, and he wondered if anyone knew that he had slipped into the drainage pit.

His partner had seen him disappear and radioed for help. There were men in the bucket truck parked at the side of the garage and they had seen him disappear, too. They sent a search and rescue crew. After several minutes of searching through the snow and smoke, they located the drainage pit – the grated lid had been removed to plow the large amounts of snow directly into it, but the discovery of the smoke had led to emergency calls and the lid was forgotten. They made their way toward it.

Ronald began to tire and thought he might slip back under the surface. He looked at the oil swirling in rainbows around his arms and the garbage closing in on him. The chill drilled into his bones and made them ache and grow heavy. Anxiety tightened his chest and, despite his breathing apparatus, no air reached his lungs. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his arms and legs slowing to near inertia.

He thought, “This is it; no one will find me.” Then he felt his mother’s hands tying his hood just the way he remembered her doing it when he was a boy; he smelled the lotion on her hands; and he heard the comforting sound of the string running through the hood of his jacket. Peace lay gently over him. The sound of voices, muffled as if deep inside his head, and the feel of hands yanking him out of the cold, wet tomb broke the memory’s spell.