2.06.2006
Anger Sweetened
"If you want to ruin the truth, stretch it." ~Author Unknown
I wonder how often you say exactly what you mean? I wonder how, if you don't say the words lurking just beneath your tongue, do you deal with the reflux of them later?
Though we have been told all our lives "the truth shall set you free", many of us, as reported by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, "live in an age of 'truthiness'", where what we believe to be true is often passed off as truth despite having any empirical evidence of its truth; it simply is because we say so.
Though truth is an abstract word, it should hold some concrete weight in our lives. It should be examined with a fine toothed comb, and used willingly and freely. It shouldn't be covered up, hidden, or made to feel unneccesary. It should be the first thing we greet in the morning, and the last thing we speak at night. When we subscribe to truthiness we do more than compromise who we are, we set into motion the idea we have to lie in order to make it in this world.
For the last six years I've been searching for a truth, something to sink my claws into, something to sustain me, validate me, embrace me. What I have found over and over again, is me. I am the truth, when I choose it. I am the light, when I see it. I am any and every thing my little heart can dream, and there is no greater truth than that, none, whatsoever.
The poem I'm about to share, the words Oprah closed her show with a few weeks ago (paraphrased: it's not whether or not James [Frey] lied, it's about how much our contemporary generations view the truth) and the fact that I don't always say what I mean, or mean what I say is the reasoning behind this post.
I wonder how often you say exactly what you mean? I wonder how, if you don't say the words lurking just beneath your tongue, do you deal with the reflux of them later? Though we have been told all our lives "the truth shall set you free", many of us, as reported by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, "live in an age of 'truthiness'", where what we believe to be true is often passed off as truth despite having any empirical evidence of its truth; it simply is because we say so.
Though truth is an abstract word, it should hold some concrete weight in our lives. It should be examined with a fine toothed comb, and used willingly and freely. It shouldn't be covered up, hidden, or made to feel unneccesary. It should be the first thing we greet in the morning, and the last thing we speak at night. When we subscribe to truthiness we do more than compromise who we are, we set into motion the idea we have to lie in order to make it in this world.
For the last six years I've been searching for a truth, something to sink my claws into, something to sustain me, validate me, embrace me. What I have found over and over again, is me. I am the truth, when I choose it. I am the light, when I see it. I am any and every thing my little heart can dream, and there is no greater truth than that, none, whatsoever.
The poem I'm about to share, the words Oprah closed her show with a few weeks ago (paraphrased: it's not whether or not James [Frey] lied, it's about how much our contemporary generations view the truth) and the fact that I don't always say what I mean, or mean what I say is the reasoning behind this post.
Anger Sweetened, by Molly Peacock
What we don't forget is what we don't say.
I mourn the leaps of anger covered
by quizzical looks, grasshoppers covered
by coagulating chocolate. Each word,
like a leggy thing that would have sprung away,
we caught and candified so it would stay
spindly and alarmed, poised in our presence,
dead, but in the shape of its old essence.
We must eat them now. We must eat the words
we should have let go but preserved, thinking
to hide them. They wer as small as insects blinking
in our hands, but now they are stiff and shirred
with sweet to twice their size, so what we gagged
will gag us now that we are so enraged.
