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December 03, 2005
karma quest -- day 24
'the truth is --' i started to say and then stopped, the water continuing to flow over me, splashing at my feet.
why is it that we think of the truth as something that is fixed in the past? isn't something that's true, isn't it always true? can anything change from being false to true? or true to false? our knowledge of the truth can change; our understanding of the truth can change, but the truth, by definition, doesn't mutate.so, if one dinosaur turned to his mate one day and said in dinosaur talk, "you know honey, some day there will be apartment buildings right here where we are standing, and a newstand on the corner with a short fat guy named Jerry who smokes cigars and carries a hip flask on cold mornings." and she would say, "shush your silly talk and come back to the nest for a while, i have plans for you..."
we'll leave them to their interlude, but stand on the point: what the dinosaur said, or chriped or growled, might, in fact, be the truth. truth that is not always necessarily scientifically provable -- not provable in the one-way linear structure of time we inhabit now.
so, things are either true or they are not.
and if they are true, they are always true.
get this: apart from language, everything is true. that is, everything we percieve, the light, the shadows, the scents, the colors and textures, all the ways the universe calls to us, it calls with truth, with reality, with actuality. only in our thoughts -- specifically in our linguistic thoughts -- and in the words we speak and hear does anything other than the truth exist.
i think.
and i am using language to communicate it.
to you.
now you might say, what about David Copperfield, the magician -- he fools people without using language, what about that? what about special effects in movies, they aren't the truth, and they aren't using language... how do you reconcile that mister brainiac?
well, actually, things like that, dramatic performances, the fun house, even buildings that are designed to look like something they are not, they are actually emitting only truths, but they are crafted in such a way that we misinterpret the truth that we witness and instead we perceive an impossibility, or a fallacy, or some devious trick of the filmmaker or the architect or the stage designer or the makeup man. they aren't trifling with the truth, they are seducing the way your mind interprets it. and these dissemblers are everywhere, you can make a very good living indeed if you are willing to play in that cesspool, there's lucre to be had there in spades.
the towel was warm, well-woven. it felt good in my hands, on my head when i dried my hair, the cotton absorbing the water, the air evaporation-cool on my skin, the sunlight diffuse, reflected from the sky to the north barely warming me.
and the question is, and i hope it's not a scarey one: do you want to know the truth?
posted by matthew at 11:03 AM
Truth is Beauty, my friend, and it will set you Free. It is what it is. Wishing it were or were not so, or seeing it other than it is will not change it.
posted by: k on December 3, 2005 01:53 PM
I think it can be established that there is a black and white when it comes to truth. Either something is or it isn't. You can't be a little pregnant.
posted by: Corinne on December 6, 2005 12:22 AM
Perhaps we all know it already. Otherwise, if we didn't know it, how could we run from it in some manner...going this way and that, zig-zagging around it, covering it, avoiding it, adding to it, coloring it, playing with it.
We all talk about it, say we want it...but in "truth"...
posted by: Kurt on December 6, 2005 01:21 PM