On the Shortfalls of Narrative, Part Ii
...I say all this as a writer
who makes narratives all the time,
I love stories, they’re lots of fun,
and when done well they’re quite sublime.
But every time I write a tale
I cannot help but be aware
that placed up against the real world
my narratives just can’t compare.
Even when I’ve thought it all out,
believe I’ve covered everything,
compared to what humans endure
my creations come up lacking.
The realness of our human souls
exceed the characters I make,
the details of the outside world
no purple prose can imitate.
The details of the narrative
don’t even match what’s in my mind,
and what I think is paltry when
compared to our real space and time.
Because, of course, the narrative
was never even close to real,
it’s just a tool we created,
it’s a thing we’ve made up to deal
with a world that our mind can’t grasp
in its massive entirety,
narrative is just our filter
because there’s too much truth to see.
To make it something we can know
we cut out most of what’s out there,
the endless details of chaos
that make the smartest minds despair.
I think all should remember that,
all of our ideologies
are narratives, and thus too small
to deal with the reality.
To forget that, to cling to them,
as if in them all was explained
reduces us, and blinds us too,
and that’s before it brings the pain.
And it always does…
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