“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.”
- Simone Weil
“Lie!”
The shout tore
through walls, bricks flying
out the back of the house.
Some struck cars, smashing windows,
denting steel.
Others killed passer-by.
Pools of blood in the streets.
In a corner of the house
a spider wrapped in webs
found flesh and ate heartily.
We duly note the human liar
walked calmly out the gaping hole
with his property intact.
Even without turning to Nietzsche (“On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”), I think its fairly clear that all children lie; it is through lying that we learn to be social. And it is through (gradual) sociality that we start to forgive ourselves for our childhood lies and, as such, forget them.
What a lovely quote ““Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life”, simply express that we dealing with the fruitful emotions of entire life…
Lies,the reflection of an evolution of every person just getting their goals and made a successful activity…
Fiction is, as the novelist Dorothy Allison said, ” the great lie that tells us the truth about how the rest of the world lives.”
I could be completely off base but I think these two ideas belong together. There is something about the power of lies to penetrate the pyche that even unadorned truth, does seem to illicit. Lies as a tool for self advancement is always distractive – like the poem describes, but I think its not that kind of lie that the poem describes – its the kind of lie that illuminates a new reality to the subject of the poem. World defining falsities that allow access to a the deeper reality – the actual REAL.