I suppose my first entry into my blog should be why I would call it “No Fiction Necessary.” For many years I’ve been pointing out to students in my classes choice bits of history that are too strange to believe. Kind of like a Ripley’s Believe It or Not of goings on. But in a course I taught this Fall with G---, he forced me to wonder why I prioritized factual strange happenings over our own imaginings, the kind of thing artists and poets create.
After all, what does it matter that a bizarre little twist of life happened? It means, I think, that our expectations of what is to come might have to be shelved, and we would be more wary of what lurks around the bend, literally. Asian religions or philosophies, such as Buddhism, and translated for us by Jung, make a rather big deal of these freaky little happenstances in our lives, as if they might be a sign.
An aside on that word, “happenstance.” I was mulling language over one day after reading the Bhagavad-Gita. It says something about detaching yourself from the fruits of life, and attaching yourself to the process. I started considering the word “happy.” Hmm, I thought, for most words that have a “y” on the end the initial part of the word means something alone, like “funny” and “fun.” I looked up “hap” and discovered that it meant “good luck.” Hence, to be happy meant that you were “good-lucky.” To be happy then, meant that good luck would happen to you, which if you were either spiritual or superstitious—you choose—meant that someone was smiling down on you, or up, depending again on your perspective.
So to focus on quirky little, and sometimes big, happenstances (notice now that you have a deeper understanding of the word?), means that your life actually has meaning. Your path is not just a chaotic, statistically driven, slog. Rather, it is a magical path, full of mystery and grace.
An example is in order, I believe, for you to completely grasp this aspect of No Fiction Necessary. But actually, there are three categories of examples, illustrating three modes of the fantastic. The first is a feat that defies credibility. The second is coincidence beyond belief. The third is an ironic outcome.
To illustrate the first, the feat, I will tell you a story about my wife. Growing up in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua, Mexico, M---- lived in a house with no electricity until she was five, and no plumbing until just a few years ago. Heating was all done with wood—piñon and juniper scents wafted through her village. In her late teens, she was walking a friend of hers (nickname Nalgas de Liebre, or “hare buns,” both for her bony structure and rabbit-like sexual proclivities) to the end of the lane that led to her house, about the length of a football field. At the end, near the dirt road that wound out of town, M---- spied a tail sticking up out of the tall grass, black with a streak of white. M---- had always tried to get her brother to capture a pet skunk for her, like the litter of raccoons (mapaches) that he had trapped. He, showing good sense, had always refused. Now was her chance. Bunny-buns said there was no way she could catch it, and left for town. M----, now alone with her three-year-old son, approached the skunk, which did not flee. Bending over and gathering it in her arms, she carried it to the gate and put it gently back on the ground and laying hold of the tail, steered it down the lane to her house. Once there, she picked it up again and maneuvered it into a cage.
When M----‘s mother caught whiff of their approach, she hollered what-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-doing! M----, with out-thrust chin, said that she was keeping a new pet. Like the skunk, M----‘s parents wilted in front of her confidence. Her father threatened to shoot it, but M---- guarded the skunk with her own body. Lest you believe that it was tame or fixed, the skunk then sprayed its new dwelling, and generally made a nuisance of itself until it died a week later, ostensibly of the same causes as the Arawak Indians and residents of New Hampshire, lack of freedom.
Do you believe it happened? I have eyewitness accounts, and the years of experience with my wife to know that it did. What does it mean? It means that there is more room to move in this world than we are taught, and that humanity’s plastic rules about what is possible, even relatively rigid ones dealing with nature, may be much more malleable than we assume.
The history of Mexico is rife with human doings that seem like one giant tall tale. Take Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. It might be the most impressive collection of audacious feats by one group of people in a relatively short span of time. Think about it, they attempted to conquer and control millions of people with a few hundred men. It is almost more amazing that they thought they could, than the actual accomplishment. We try to make sense of it by saying that the Spanish had the superior technology and the Mexica were paralyzed by their superstitions, but reading the eyewitness account by Bernal Díaz del Castillo dispels those myths. Those conquistadors were good-lucky. (I do not mean to say they were right in what they did, just that what they did was unbelievable.)
In my travels and conversations with Mexicans I have learned that these kinds of stories and adventures abound. I lamented to G--- that American storytellers and writers have a handicap when competing with Mexicans. We just don’t get a chance to experience fantastical stories growing up in Levittown suburbs. There’s a reason magical realism originated in Latin America. G--- concurred, and tossed me a nugget of a Zen koan, “They have their imaginations on the outside.”
I’m still puzzling on it. To have your imagination on the outside means that the wall that separates our dreams from reality was constructed by mimes. We modern cynics decry the possibility of true goodness in today’s world, and we stop searching for it. The path leads both ways, though. What we dream might become real, but the actual world could also turn into a nightmare. Fantastical accomplishments are not limited to the good. To wit again the conquest of Mexico.
Next post: Coincidence or Synchronicity.
