This is NOT Over

True Confessions of an Honest Liar

My dad and I went to a party at a relative’s house. I was seventeen and my dad was however old he was at the time. This relative, who will remain anonymous for reasons that elude me, had a small pond at the bottom of a hill, a good distance away from the unnamed relative’s house. While it may sound like someone in my family lives on an estate or somewhere impressive because there is a house on a hill with enough property to have a pond, rest assured this land was worthless.

It was a typical extended-family party and at a certain point the boilermakers lost all meaning for me. Somebody told me that two large turtles resided in the small pond at the bottom of the hill, on the worthless property. I thought, ‘I’ll go down and meet some turtles.’

Slowly but eventually I made it to the bottom of the hill but saw only one of the two turtles. I didn’t feel ripped off because this turtle was huge. Impressive. He seemed friendly enough. Hands in my pockets, I approached the animal and said: ‘Hi turtle-wurtle.’ The turtle responded by slowly stretching out its neck and biting through my shoe, my sock and into my big toe - to which I responded: ‘Fuck! Motherfucker!!!’ I guess turtles hate it when you call them turtle-wurtle.

Minutes passed, and the turtle remained attached to my big toe. Now, I was still verbally expressing my displeasure with the thing but it was more like, ‘Ouch, ok you got me. This really hurts.’ I mean it hurt more than I let on but I wasn’t going to let the turtle know that, so I stopped screaming at it. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s why I stopped screaming. Maybe it hurt too much to scream. Maybe screaming was sapping me of the precious energy needed locked in battle with my determined foe. Maybe I was starting to go into shock. Now that I think about it, I’m not 100% sure that I stopped screaming.

Anyway, at this point in the story (as things usually do at such a point in such a story) it went from bad to worse to something else. I couldn’t escape the death grip of the turtle’s mouth and I certainly needed saving. However, there is one (and only one) person that I didn’t want to save me. As per usual (in stories of this type) that person came walking down the hill. That person? That person was my father. My dad is strong and smart and more than a match for any turtle. But my dad also loves to make fun of me. He walked down the hill, staring at my foot and did his best to control his laughter.

“What happened to your foot kid?”
“He bit me.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t outrun a turtle Eddie?”
“No. He didn’t chase me down Dad…he just…I don’t know, he outsmarted me.”

That was all it took. The old man was now laughing his ass off. He walked back toward the house and started calling our relatives and other partygoers down to the pond. Minutes later, everybody from the party and maybe a few of the neighbors were down there, looking at my foot and laughing. Sadly, I think this made me feel better. People took turns trying to pull the turtle off my toe, but that hurt much worse than the biting. They brought tools down from the garage and tried to pry its mouth open. No luck. We poured whiskey in the turtle’s eyes - my idea. The turtle seemed disturbed by this (not as disturbed as my dad was) but, disturbed as the turtle was, he didn’t let go. Somebody suggested that we might be able to scare the turtle by making loud noises. Some stomped their feet, some shouted “Boo!” One guy, my Great Uncle Sam (not the one you think), punched the turtle in the face and called it a “dirty motherfucker.” Eventually, the turtle fell asleep…

…with its mouth still clamped on my big toe.

My dad said, “Well, we’re just gonna have to shoot it.”
Someone else said, “Yeah.”
Someone else said, “Good idea.”
And at last, one of the someones, the someone who owned the house said, “I’ll get the .22.” Apparently they had anticipated one or more of the turtles getting out of line.

The last someone brought the gun down to the little pond and handed it to my dad. I saw my dad, God love him, sway a little bit as he took aim at the turtle’s head.

“Dad – how much have you had to drink?”
“Enough,” he said.
“You can’t shoot this fucking thing if you’ve been drinking!”
“Eddie, watch your mouth,” said my dad.
“I’m just saying you’re gonna shoot my foot – especially since you’re standing ten feet away from me. And, are you swaying?”
“Good point,” said my dad.
“Ok, just give me the gun. I’m going to shoot the turtle.”

I looked down at the turtle and asked it if it had any last words – secretly hoping it would open its mouth and I could run away. No such luck. Luck is not a big part of this story. I pushed the barrel of the gun along the turtle’s neck and into its shell. I thought this would be a safe distance from my toe. Some part of what was left of me thought ‘Well, even if I shoot my toe off, this’ll make one hell of a story’ – as if that is/was/or will be – worth anything. Once I felt that the barrel of the gun was secure, I closed my eyes, pulled the trigger, and…

Bang.

I was lucky as shit that when the top part of the shell exploded none of the turtle shrapnel tore into my leg, my eyes, my dick! Here’s where I wasn’t so lucky. I killed the turtle, but its last instinct was to bite down as hard as it could. I felt its turtle teeth scrape the bone of my toe…

…from Hell’s heart it, um?, bit my big toe.

I was also lucky that the gun I used WASN’T a pump 4-10 or any sort of actual (or almost) shotgun. In reality it was more like a Daisy or a power-pop pellet gun. The story is better without including this level of analysis…which, sort of, brings me to my dilemma.

I’ve told this story a million times. I hope more of it is true than I’m letting on here. I’m not sure if it matters at this point. What I am sure of is I’ve lost some of my perspective on this little misadventure in my life. In a more general sense, I have lost some perspective on other parts of my life and that has much to do with the retelling, or rewriting of the damned thing. Maybe the obvious image makes sense. I’ve painted/wrote myself into a corner. At some point I thought there was enough in me, or enough that has happened to me that is somehow worth writing down. Whether or not that was ever true is no longer the question. - For better or whatever, I’ve made myself into a writer and made me, what’s in me, and some of the shit that’s happened to me the stuff of that writing. I’ve written about me – ed nauseum. Much of what I know about my life, I seem to know second hand. That is meant to sound more stupid than shocking. I started re-re-telling these stories in parts of the book you are about to put down never to open again (if you’re smart). Here’s an excerpt from my personal journal on drafting the early chapters of this book:

“I’ve also started – officially – whatever the fuck that means – editing the earliest portions of this journal for the book – or whatever it is I am writing now. What have I noticed about reading my first efforts? Notice what I am doing right now. I’m writing about reading what I’ve written. How exciting is that?”

…by the way, I’m still doing it. The problem should be clear, but let me continue:

“In these earlier journal entries that I am editing now for the book thing, a lot of shit happened to me on a daily (well, usually nightly) basis. I wrote about what I was doing or what was happening to me and that’s it. Now, it’s not like nothing is happening to me now. If only I could’ve made that last sentence a palindrome, but if the word palindrome isn’t a palindrome how can anyone expect anything clever out of me. Oh, things are happening now. Trying to be a responsible dad and husband - raising a kid, these are certainly more exciting and productive/worthwhile things…definitely more worthwhile than drinking all the time while trying not to date three different girls who do not like me very much. So, at this stage in my life, things are actually happening to me – life changing shit – but what do I write about? I write about writing.
Ironically, I started this journal in the fall in 1989 to keep track of stuff I was writing because I was too messed up – almost all the time – my memory, well…”

what were we talking about?

“Oh, somewhere in my fuzzy head I thought keeping a journal would help me save the occasional songs I wrote (as if any of them were any good) from being forgotten…which might’ve been best for all concerned. As it turned out, I wrote little that was worth playing – forget reading about – so what filled up the pages? My life. I wrote about what I was doing, which – in theory, the songs were supposed to be about…But in the journal I wrote about my life, various activities, relationships (as fucked up as they were). I know I originally wanted to write about writing – but I wrote about living, which I thought I did much better at the time – or at least my living was more interesting than my writing…”

…it gets worse…

“Now, I’m sure that I am a better writer than I was then, although there is little proof of that here – but the bigger question is: Why write in the first place? In other words, what good is writing if it doesn’t help sort out living? But I don’t write as much about living anymore, and I think I’m even better at living NOW (relative to then) than I was at living then, or writing at any time. Anyhow 7000 pages later…”

…this was page 7004 of my journal…

“…I think I’m still doing the opposite of what I’m supposed to be doing – which is the opposite of what I was doing when I started putting this whole mess down 7000 pages ago – and to my dismay both opposites are wrong, both for their time and in general, which is to say neither of them were, are, or will ever be right. Write. Right? One thing is clear, now today more than ever…”

Any questions? It was at that point in rereading my journal reaction to the early drafts of this book that I realized I was in bigger trouble than I thought. Not only did I write myself into a corner, but I thought myself into a corner and may still be in the process of thinking myself into a corner. It should be clear that I don’t give a damn if anyone ever reads this; I need to continue the process until something makes sense to me. I thought I was helping myself in some way when I was writing. What does it mean that the subject of the matter at hand (me) can’t make sense out of its life on paper? In other words, I don’t recognize myself, I don’t even see how this activity helps anymore (or ever) and worst of all, I can’t stop. Maybe the ultimate intervention comes in the form of rejection letters from publishers.

I need to at least realize what I have become if I can’t make sense out of the process of writing and can no longer even trust the retelling of my life, as the turtle story above indicates. Restatement of the problem: I’ve had experiences. Writing about those experiences has distorted them. Now I’m not sure I trust the experiences. I was also supposed to express something (bigger?) by writing about the experiences, but at the end of the day (or at least now/currently, I hope this isn’t the “end of the day” with respect to my life) – but at the end of the day, whenever it is, I’m not even writing about the experiences anymore. I’m writing about the process of writing. Here, then, is why you should read this. I have become what Frederick Nietzsche calls “the extremist possible example” of the problem modern man is facing. This is from On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. Consider:

"Imagine the extremist possible example of a man who did not possess the power of
forgetting at all and who was thus condemned to see everywhere a state of becoming:
such a man would no longer believe in his own being, would no longer believe in himself, would see everything flowing asunder in moving points and would lose himself in this stream of becoming: like a true pupil of Heraclitus, he would in the end hardly dare to raise his finger. Forgetting is essential to action of any kind…"

And that used to be me all over. It is my hope that in writing this thing I will recognize that “this” is no longer what I want to be. With a critical eye and some hard work, I will learn to live like the happy cow described at the beginning of the aforementioned work by FN. If I am successful and you see me walking down the street, please don’t ask me to explain why I am happy. In theory, the response is: ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say’ – but then I will forget this answer too and stay silent – leaving you in wonder.

Hopefully this is the responsible approach I am taking with this project and I will end up like one of Nietzsche’s happy cattle. Otherwise I run the risk of being the self-fulfilling prophecy of a different sort of historical man put forth by a philosopher even more famous than Frederick Nietzsche – Don Henley. Henley tells us that “some dance to remember, some dance to forget” – and it is precisely at this moment that I realize I am in way over my head.

Silas Maria, Oberengadin
August 1886 -