My Stories – Rosa Armstrong

With love from East Africa

Crossing the Atlantic changes lives. I was less than two days in Rennes and partly stunned at my renewed sense of understanding of the word ‘overseas’. I was literally over the seas, I had traveled over the Mediterranean to this new place where 9pm still looked like 3pm and where everyone smoked and spat on the street corners. The dogs were more than the people and everyone automatically made a gurgly distinct sound in their throats when they had to pronounce the letter R.

I was in a completely different world and surrounded by very different people, ideas, food, and experiences. Everyone spoke so fast and public transport was unbelievably reliable. I stared at people on the metro and looked away when they looked back at me. Some people preferred to sit in a hunched bird-like position, huddled over their bags in a desperate bid to catch the last bits of sleep before they arrived at their destinations. Others stayed wide awake reading a paper or staring out the window. I’d come to know the tram line so well. Three more stops before we get to the University. I’d jump off energetically lest the door ram shut! On this vast college campus, I’d sometimes meet people that I felt not all that mentally in tune with. Small talk would develop into conversations, and these conversations would slowly plateau into dismal pleasantries. Later, I’d start avoiding people entirely in a frantic attempt to dissociate. Other times, I found myself in the company of people I thought were perfect! We had the same thoughts and impressions on a myriad of topics, we loved the same music, we agreed on what outfits looked good and which looked tacky. We would sit for hours on end enjoying the silence of our shared experiences.

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My class was full of Asians. I think I may have mastered the art of small talk at that point in my life. I ‘d ask the dumbest questions, like how did they make the chopstick not fall out of their grip and why they ate that many eggs. The White Americans in my class preferred to walk together in cliques. They drank wine with whatever little breaks we had in between class and maintained a close-knit group. They were here on a group travel sponsored by one of these organizations, AISEC or CIEE. My breaks were times where I had conversations with myself or someone from back home. I was lonely and mostly too cold to care for conversation or feel like I was missing out on the Asians out-of-the-world Tofu experience or the Americans’ wine drinking spree. I sat with my phone in hand on most days, close by the heater.

I had gloomy days for a while until I met Mandy. Mandy was American and she was in Université Rennes 2 through CIEE. She is originally from Kenya and full of life and laughter. She quickly became a representation of East Africa and opened my eyes to the possibilities of real life, real people, and experiences beyond the confines of Ghana. She had long black braids that came down to her waist. They were dyed scarlet at the edges and she was really tall; about six feet and two inches and unapologetic about towering over our heads. She wore heels all the time! Heels and really short mini jupes. She wanted to get married thrice because she was unsure of the possibility of being stuck with one man for life! She was an outlier, funny and the perfect friend. Mandy reinforced the importance of travel and the acceptance and acknowledgment of different perspectives. I was Ghanaian after all and had known everything Ghanaian up until that point so meeting her was truly refreshing and very different. We went out at night in zero-degree weather and came back near morning, half asleep and holding our shoes in our hands. She lived with a host family and loved the family’s daughter Carla but hated their dog with all her might. She said the dog got hair on all her fine clothes.

Eight years after Rennes, I am still in touch with Mandy. Image-1 (4)

Withering Heights IV

I saw a Tee shirt on Instagram that said NAH. Rosa Parks – 1955. I was greatly impressed at how pieces of history were gradually and steadily being integrated into popular culture. Maybe I was going to get this Tee shirt and probably also attempt to help artists or visual experts work or draw inspiration from the long and bitter struggle for freedom over the years both in Africa and America for the negro….

perfect segue for talking about how reading James Baldwin had had so much of an effect on me. His Fire Next Time was brimming over with double negative structures. I mean, the most apparent reason for the excessive use of this structure was remotely tied to the admittance of the hopelessness of the nigger’s situation…

The word independence in Africa and the word integration (in America) are almost equally meaningless; that is, Europe has not yet left Africa, and black men here are not yet free – James Baldwin

It was a double negative life for me the whole week. Dinner with my Botswana people was fun…but for some reason, I couldn’t shake off the analysis of the relationship dynamics between white and black people. We’d come far and I knew people were now more sensitized and maybe exonerated of all racial bias….but then, wasn’t the subtle slave master, dominant dominee (if you like ) relationship still present somewhere? even in the most subtle way?… So this happened to me.

Previous weeks ago, I had a misunderstanding with a peer over something as basic as filling a tub with water. The peer was white and I wondered if her ‘concern’ for how I filled the tub was due to anything linked to my lack of logic or simple common sense. I was livid. I wasn’t about to allow myself be micromanaged over something as basic as filling a tub with water. Had post-coloniality left me sensitive to the point of extreme cynicism?

The tub of water was my no…

Withering Heights III

Does familiarity breed contempt? No. Sometimes it breeds recklessness…and that is the amount of recklessness I felt these men were demonstrating. I thought I was way past the age of being in a crowded space with wine spills and incoherent speech….not that I have a problem with the concepts of wine spilling and incoherent speech. We’ve all been there. At least at one point in our lives. But then it was more about the lax and wanton grossness of it all. These men felt they knew us. So there was no need for any type of stiff-necked civility. Which irritated me very much. I think we need to ‘try’, like just fucking try to be civil no matter how long you think you’ve known a person. I remember that night on the phone when out of the need to hear his opinion on an unrelated topic I asked; do you think men take stuff for granted when they get to know you in a more intimate way? His answer was; I think humans have the potential of taking everything for granted once they get to know you. And I guess he was right. We all do take things for granted all the time.

I thought she was weird. The main question was, is she weird or just different? And I remember frowning a lot on many occasions when after nearly two years of friendship she would still come and ask me for permission to use my stuff. Cherie, you can have it. I would say, why ask? Just take it. In retrospect, I respect the fact that she asked. I guess familiarity did not ease her into the comfort of taking boundaries and space for granted which I appreciate now.

So the men wanted to dance…and just like any human that abuses familiarity, the general unmentioned consensus was to dance regardless of if we wanted to or not. An assertive dialogue broke out over this. He thought it was about feminism, and I was just ready to explode. An implosive fit that left me in awe of how refusing to dance is tied to feminism. I was in awe of how Feminism sounds like an accusation sometimes. Maybe I wanted to graduate this implosive fit to an explosive and exaggerated one but I knew better than to get involved with drunk pontificating men. Quite bluntly, I didn’t and don’t care much for feminism. Anything that ensures the sanity, respect and harmonious coexistence of the human race is what we all really want. I recommend everyone doing what floats their boat and if men and women choose to dance, or not dance, the recipient of that bit of info should be ok with it.

Withering Heights II

I’m up at 5am. I sleep off until 6 and then finally jump up at 7am. I’ve been checking my notifications by the hour. 5am notification about some random reply to a comment I made on a post on Facebook, 6am notification about someone getting married on my high school group chat and 7am notification about my dwindling credit score on credit karma. This country is cursed no doubt. You want to know what’s more painful than whatever pain you think you’ve gone through? Real pain is when you think you’re about to get richer. The money hits your account but then there’s a negative balance in there so the freshly dropped bucks go to cover the old debt. How nice.

All along, I’ve been navigating this life with a clustered mind full of to-dos. My heart is in one place and my mind is in another. Society teaches us not to give a fuck. Needless to say, books are being published on the Subtle art of not giving a fuck. I’ve watched this book’s Ted Talk and decided that it was a good one. I was probably going to get the book to learn more about assertiveness and being unapologetic, protecting one’s interests and emphasizing the need to be independent minded. There’s so much busi-ness around me. People are barely finding time to wipe their bums to the extent that it gets equally easy to dispose of people who stress the hell out of us. Sometimes we feel justified in letting go. Other times we feel bad and try to reach out but then we let life kick in, we allow real responsibilities or made up responsibilities pile up, and then we forget the mental note we made to reach out and rather remind ourselves to not bother. We’re independent, loveless, strong and maybe proud. Money over mushiness.

Months ago, my childhood best friend and I had a misunderstanding over something trivial. She got upset and I decided to give her some space. I missed her along the line, took my phone on many occasions to text her but very much aware of how the act might make me look weak, I chose my busy world instead.

Today she texted me, and defenseless, I texted her back. I missed you.

Withering Heights I

I was told that I was going to get some cake with some strawberries. Strawberries with an S… I had the cake and all I literally had was a strawberry.

I had to admit that though old, this man had a sense of humor that was both annoying and endearing at the same time. In addition to that, he made me dread being tall. What was the use of being tall when eventually, time’s winged chariot would cause our back to bend?! Almost every other tall senior I knew had a bent back. My friend’s grandmother from elementary school had a dangerous stoop that forced me to think of a tree after a storm. Branches bent, stalk bent, leaves all drooping and downward facing. It felt like time eventually taught us, tall people, a lesson or two about the kind of conceit that comes with height. We look at short people with this kind of I’m taller than you look. We strut about confidently and expect life to bow to us because we are tall. How tall are you? We are quick to fill in the blanks…and then when we meet a taller person than we are, we somehow stay on the brinks of admiration and envy. Life catches on with all of us, and the short people stay short, erect and unwavering…and then we just bend. Probably to all that conceit from earlier life. Poetic justice at best. Like big bouncy breasts that stand glorious in youth and stoop miserably low in old age. Do the smaller boobs apologize for their full mast upwardness despite the strokes of time? No. Voila la vie.

Today though, I found myself in a lighter mood. Lighter than usual. And why wouldn’t I be happier? I had this old man and the many residents who lived here to keep me in a lighter and reflective mood. The first thing I noticed when I got to this place was the ambiance. It smelt clean and had a good amount of hominess to it. The kind of homeyness that manifested itself with familiar smells. Smells that clung to one’s nostrils and remained no matter how far away one went. These were smells that stayed in the memory and heart. I doubt I was ever going to forget the smells that filled this place for a long time to come. While cinnamon filled my nostrils, I wondered how many stories were seated in the room. The seniors looked like perched and roosting chickens. I saw old age in different manifestations; some heartwarming, and some dreadfully sad. The common denominator though was the fact that there was some kind of ominous acknowledgment of the awaiting of death. I mean, what were a bunch of almost hundred-year-olds and in some cases more than a hundred year olds waiting for? Quite bluntly, they were waiting for it. Death the leveler. It was ominous yet some of them had wholeheartedly accepted that at some point, it would come. The oldest resident questioned why God still kept her around. Hers was the kind of wait that was not altogether ominous. At her age, the only defects she had were a bad vision and bad hearing. Glorious white hair, a straight back, and a high pitched voice. She was in better shape than others; she’d been blessed. In the land of blind people, the one-eyed man was truly king.

How My Story Intersects with Africa

I grew up with my grandmother who is such an entertaining old lady. She would not back down to an intimidating Christian song just because she did not know the lyrics. The solution was quite simple; either invent her own words or substitute words with sounds that she made . The problem though was that these sounds sounded more like the repetitive tooting of a klaxon and soon became my special indication that it was morning and time for school. Living with my grandmother was both intimate and educative. My identity as a Fante and a Ghanaian was molded and instilled in me right from infancy. I was taught the name of the moon and how to call God using a variation of Fante words such as Nana Nyame, Nyankopon, Ewuradze and Oky3so Nyame. I heard my grandmother pray loudly in the middle of the night and God’s Fante names were unavoidable and unmistakably present in our home. I learned them, it was impossible not to.

There were also those Sunday afternoons that met me sitting in the kitchen for hours on end making Palm nut soup with my grandmother. Making palm soup was annoying and one I do not miss in the least. It involved pounding the nut, removing the mixture of smashed fruit and kernel and chaff, squeezing them while separating the kernel all in water, passing everything through a colander, repeating, and doing all these cumbersome things until you obtained a thick orange liquid which we were going to spend another two or so hours boiling and observing…..and that was not it! No, no! After this ordeal, I still had all the dishes to deal with! Mind you, that was also no easy task since palm oil has abnormal adhesive qualities and will stick to every container! This meant that I needed to scrub the pot doggedly like my very life depended on it. Guess what, my grandmother’s eyes can spot oil stains as minuscule as a grain of dirt. Squeaky clean quickly became an understatement. #Mylife. I doubt my grandmother could relate to my pain. She did not obviously because we came back to this soul draining work almost every other week. Her simple and obstinate reason for sticking with this overrated delicacy was simple; that it was the best food for feeding the entire family over a long period of time. WHAT entire family? AND WHAT long period? Who wanted to spend an entire life time eating Palm nut soup?! I looked left and right, it was only her and me, there was no real huge family, it was just us, but unfortunately, she was right. The soup did feed us and for a long time! The thing about Palm soup is that the longer it ages, the better it gets; more like fine wine. So basically, a huge cauldron of soup could last us a whole week; lunch and dinner inclusive for seven days, sometimes more. Palm soup was not the only type of soup that lived up to its utilitarian claims; indeed, the palm tree itself is a three in one resource that can produce not only food but alcohol, brooms for cleaning the home, baskets and many more decorative and visually pleasing accents for the home. My childhood was loaded with cultural information that was either intentionally or unintentionally shared. In addition to knowing the home remedy for almost every kind of condition, I was seamlessly socialized to be the woman I am today. We grew spices and medicinal grass and plants we used ourselves. Knowing which one exactly to use to cure a slight malaise, which to eat for strength and which to use to achieve flavor in a steaming pot of stew. I grew up with a wealth of cultural information at my feet. I became the woman that did not imitate in an empty attempt to be Ghanaian, but the woman who knew the reason behind every reproduced cultural act. My children are going to inevitably learn from me too.

When it was time for me to go off to college, my grandmother convinced me to go to the University of Cape Coast. She wanted to see more of me and couldn’t stand the thought of my going away from her. I’d lived with her from birth till high school and now I was ready to move on. We parted with a promise of seeing each other whenever we could. I studied French at the University of Ghana and one of the most profound statements I came into contact with while learning this language is the fact that one cannot fully appreciate another ‘s language if they are oblivious of their very own. This thought stuck with me and after living in parts of Africa, Europe and now America, this thought has grown to become even more relevant in my life. In a society that is a melting pot of many different cultures, I realize more than ever that the oral traditions and folklore and pretty much all the cultural information my grandmother introduced me to help me understand that I am a product of a unique culture that forms the core of my being. I remain unfazed if someone utters some kind of vulgarity to me in English. A thousand Fuck you’s will meet an indifferent stare yet insult me in Fante and I will definitely be ready to fight back. My ex-boyfriend who was born in the United States speaks to me in Fante. Fante is the language of banter, familiarity, and intimate discussion. Casual conversations that begin in English make me fully aware of the possibility of a bad day that he’s had or that he’s in a state I prefer not to relate with. To this day, I pray in Fante to my God; Nana Nyame who I believe hears and understands me. I’d like to think that Nyame and Jesus are one and the same, and that Africans are not necessarily pagan but have an understanding and knowledge of God for themselves even though they may not necessarily express it the way the world deems fit.

My knowledge of my culture helps me appreciate and respect the unique differences and similarities that groups of people across the world have. I have over twenty international contacts in my phone and the only way I have been able to keep them that close is because I appreciate my culture and know better to respect theirs too. My grandmother’s telling and re-telling of stories to me forms who I am, a lover of the literary arts. For this reason, I grew up yearning for more stories and soon, my grandmother’s oral accounts led me to seek more in written accounts. I grew up reading Ama Ata Aidoo, Efua Sutherland and a lot of Ghanaian poetry by notable poets such as Kofi Awoonor. I also read some Nigerian literature and had a childhood surrounded by a line of books called the African Pacesetters series.

One of the ideas that drive me to contribute to the body of literature is; I believe that we all have stories to share. I recently read Yaa Gyasi’s novel, Homegoing and I was happy to find that this book which is written by a Ghanaian who lives in America reinforces most aspects of my culture and childhood. The book made me realize that I hadn’t eaten with my fingers in a very long time and for weeks I have been doing just that!

To conclude, I’d say that I believe we all have stories and I am driven to tell Ghanaian and African stories and let the world know more about my culture, pride, and world. No matter where I live, the strong sense of identity and self that was ingrained into me right from childhood is the point of departure and foundation I will use as an African in the world’s cultural basket to tell my own unique story.

Beach Road

The Gallery sat there, overlooking the ocean like a lone traveler taking in the night view of this small coastal suburb.

The gallery sat at the brink of the asphalt road and was pretty to look at

It had people on long drives by the beach road staring in its direction

The ramshackle Trotro buses rolled along and appeared small and bug like against the elegance of the gallery

I thought Trotro rides could range from painful, dehumanizing and risky to carefree, breezy and empowering

And in my unique experience, night rides along the beach road were everything but empowering.

Mosquitos that had the unique ability to permeate the thickest layer of repellant journeyed happily with travelers. They had a destination too I guess.

They’d paid their fare and duly earned their place onboard among legs.

Everything got even more irritating because the Trotro had absolutely no space to wiggle or convulse out of a bite.

This experience on the beach road at rush hour reminded us of a can of sardines.

All we needed was that shitor and gari to complete this delicious experience.

Humidity, spittle, sweat and other stale-I’ve-had-a-long-ass-day-smells transited with us.

The gallery and its unusual location gave that temporary respite that elevated us beyond the Trotro experience. The ocean too and its limitlessness gave that feeling of awe only nature gives.

Fall Nights

He knew I liked the dark. He called it the silhouette effect. Of seeing and not seeing entirely. Of inhaling sharply, touching and feeling taut smooth warmth.

We drove seeking the dark that night.

His signature cologne was held in a dark bottle and I thought it was such a rip-off using a product whose longevity one couldn’t determine. You would know you’d exhausted its contents when the puff no longer bore liquid

When the puff no longer bore liquid.

His puff no longer bore any liquid the third time and I knew he’d given me his all.

I was half amused at the thought of seeking the dark for what only we knew. I’d agreed with the zodiac character trait list that was attributed to his birth month. This was a person whose depth was not face value. He held furtive glances and a silent demeanor that opened with familiarity. Then there was that episode of an occasional admission that only surfaced with intense emotion.

‘This feels so good!’

He was highly guarded and immune to vulnerability. I smiled secretly each time I sensed that in a pile of words, there was a hidden message that needed my attention. I knew when he wanted something. I learned that this was more about perception than overt expression.

More sensual than visual. Parallels with the idea of Dark Fall nights where everything was really more about perceiving than seeing or saying.

Factory Girls

4am. I am beyond late.

The idealistic part of me hated the job but the realistic part urged me and told me to go gather life experience and sauce for my writings. I’d read Emile Zola and how the repetitive imagery of darkness fills Germinal. A white horse trapped in the bowels of the mine remained untainted and my classmates and I took turns pontificating about why a horse could remain a solid pure white in a dark and dirty mine…Happens the horse symbolized hope. Hope of the common man’s resurgence after the ruling classes’ exploitation of them and blah blah

This morning though, darkness didn’t dominate my surroundings. The area was fairly lit and I stood in a sea of people, mostly women who were here to make croissants, brownies, cinnamon rolls and whatever else for the president. The task was simple. Perform the work of a human-robot picking and stacking containers with as much of what was rolling out on the carousel. And in an orderly fashion. These human robots had been at this task for years and their dexterity and pace was unmatched. How long? Twenty, thirty years? They were very protective of their work and reflected a collective sense of pride and confidence at being this excellent at their task. The task of stacking plastic boxes with cinnamon rolls for thirty years?! I shat on their ‘achievement’. I was not in awe of excellence at a career in stacking. The simplicity of the task rather exhausted me and I zoned off deep into my thoughts for life.

It was the era of the Octopus. He lay on the White House and puppeteered everything with his great long tentacles. I suppose he ate croissants too. Or did the Octopus eat croissants? Cos if he did like other normal people, he wouldn’t stir such trouble…then again, the idea of trouble is subjective so…. He probably ate croissants, that or at least some of the baked goods that this Bread company got its profits from. I wondered if the women would all pass E-verify checks. It was that or no work. You’d return home if you went hungry. Then again it was strikingly clear that this place was full of the Wall people. The people who were supposed to stay behind the Wall once it was built. They made no attempt at speaking some English and were very unapologetic about talking trash about other people just because they thought they had some kind of code language. I looked sideways at them. Another group of people here was the Dark people. ~~The Wall people dominated though.~~ Some of the Dark people had very dark lips, a slur and frankly needed the paycheck for the next pair of trendy sports shoes. What a life.

My guess was that the factory made more than five thousand pieces of baked goods each day. The ones that didn’t get sent off were frozen to be sent off later. A lot of the Wall people had a gold tooth or two. Was it a trademark like the Indians and Senegalese and their elaborate rings? Outside of this, I also noticed that some of the Wall people had backs that were tense and curved with years of repetitive work that no one wanted. I decided on day two that whatever this was wasn’t for me and with renewed thinking, I learned not to look down on the Factory Girls’ hustle.

They were right after all to be this protective of their work because no one else except they could do it this well.

The Octopus could have their work if he wanted to. After all, he had eight tentacles and near perfect business acumen.

Make America great again.

Letters to a YOUNG NOVELIST I Mario Vargas LLosa

Capture d_écran 2017-08-23 à 1.49.49 PM Note from the blurb ;- “he (the writer) lays bare the inner workings of fiction, all the while urging young novelists not to lose touch with the elemental urge to create.”

One of the truest reasons for my huge attraction to fiction is my recognition of the existence of inspiration all around us. There are stories all around! The story of your neighbor, your own life, the events that unfolded between you and the random man or woman you met! Or the dramatic break up of your friend who never listened to your words of wisdom on that waste relationship. Seriously, there are countless reasons to create! Having this in mind, I was happy to read about not losing the urge to create in the blurb of this book and discover a narration of how to grow the spark for writing.

The book is a collection of short stories, each crafted with a specific message to be delivered. I smiled as I read the parts of the book that addressed my fears/secret wishes and maybe uncertainties. How revealing it all felt! Without even going over my head with excitement and a stark fascination at how piercing its truths were, I had to remind myself that of course, this was more or less a manual of some sort created with aspiring writers in mind. One of these truths that pummeled through me addressed the aim of being a best-selling writer. Was my aim selfish or legitimate?

“I venture to suggest that you not expect quite so much and that you not count too much on success. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be successful, of course, but if you persevere in writing and publishing, you’ll soon discover that prizes, public acclaim, book sales, the social standing of a writer all have a sui generis appeal; they are extraordinarily arbitrary, sometimes stubbornly evading those who most deserve them while besieging and overwhelming those who merit them least. Which means that those who see success as their main goal will probably never realize their dreams; they are confusing literary ambition with a hunger for glory and for the financial gains that literature affords certain writers (very few of them ). There is a difference.”

This right here is an answer to the thought that has long gnawed at me. I wondered constantly how best selling authors ‘did it’. Was there a special formula to becoming a best seller? Did it have anything to do with how the material was sold or marketed? Did it have anything to do with the title of the book in question? Who decided if a story was worth the hype or not? Did the story have to be overly intellectual and loaded with lofty allusions or was I going to be fine writing about mundane things? How about the countless writers already on the scene? How do I ’emerge’ from the lot? I actually told a ~~boy~~ manfriend about my dreams of being a writer and he replied asking me if I knew the number of books that had already been published and if I really thought I could stand out? Did this remark ruffle my feathers? I kept my composure on the outside but on the inside, I crumbled and hated him immediately. However, this quotation just allayed the ‘fears’ I had created for myself. Reading this quotation though, I found the answer! Consistency and a focus on the desire to create versus a fixation on the thought of success whether in the shape of fame or monetary were not the more important question. What mattered was wanting to write and keeping at it regardless of all the odds.

And how do you know you are cut out for writing? Here you go; “deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life,..”

But of course, I more than agree that writing is “a mysterious business, of course, veiled in doubt and subjectivity” DOUBT! Doubt and subjectivity! How many times have I done and undone lines because I felt I didn’t sound smart enough?

How does it all start? “a man or a woman develops precociously in childhood or early in his or her teenage years a penchant for dreaming up people, situations, anecdotes, worlds different from the world in which he or she lives, and that inclination is the first sign of what may later be termed literary vocation”. These lines explained the constant pang in me to write. I do have a penchant for dreaming up people and situations. Whenever I meet a person, I try to get to know them as much as possible and listen to all of their stories. I also allow different perspectives to air and will only cut in if I feel what I am hearing is absolute nonsense I can not deal! Yet even with all of that, there really is a drop of truth in some kinds of trash talk. So I still listen just to be able to bring all these together in a rich melange for stories.

But why do I like literature though? Answer – Because my age old mantra has reminded me that literature mirrors life and that it is a way through which life’s events can be reflected. Yet for some reason, an interesting truth about fiction that I know I knew subconsciously but never happened to consider forthrightly was the fact that we write to alter reality! We do! Well I do! ; ‘The secret raison d’etre of literature / what they (writers) were (are) obliged to fabricate because they weren’t (aren’t) able to live it in reality and, as a result, resigned themselves to live it only in the indirect and subjective way it could be lived: in dreams and in fiction. Fiction is a lie covering up a deep truth: it is life as it wasn’t, life as the men and women of a certain age wanted to live it and didn’t and thus had to invent.

Bam!