On Fiction and Truth

Thinking about each. Especially as it concerns how fiction is presented on Earth. And the truth I know that lies within it.

When I was a little girl on Earth (funny to think I've been a little girl twice in a single lifetime), I was told that the movies I watched were not real. That the books I read were not real. That the dreams I had were not real. I was told they were illusions, stories, and made up. Fiction.

I was told there is no Mos Eisley cantina. Nor is there any such thing as Jedi. That animals do not talk. That gods are not real. That forests are only filled with trees and animals and certainly not spirits. That ghosts were just hallucinations. That my ghost cat was a hallucination. That my hallway wasn't really becoming 20 feet long in the middle of the night. And that the world I saw in my head (Erra) was just that...in my head.

Yet I still pulled down the big blue Atlas book with the galaxy in the front pages, and I stared at the stars thinking I would go home there. And I looked at Luke Skywalker and knew what he could do was possible. That spaceships didn't look like stupid flying saucers, but more like X-Wings and Imperial destroyers. I watched The Cat from Outer Space, and knew that a talking cat was entire plausible.

I looked at the pictures of mammoths and remembered how much they stank and how hot their bodies were. I looked at the maps of the sea floor and knew there were whole civilizations down there. I watched Aladdin and knew genies were real. I watched The Lion King and knew that story was somehow true, and that it wasn't some metaphor. That this was a story about an actual lion clan and their troubles.

I met dogs and cats and talked to them, and they talked right back. Same with snakes, salamanders, frogs, and turtles. I knew the plum tree in my backyard was a tree spirit that liked when I sat in her branches.

I knew the leopard in my dream that showed me the secret paths of the forest behind my neighborhood was as real as the dream hawk reminding me how to fly. Or my ghost cat on my wicker shelf that showed up at 3:00 PM almost every day on the dot.

Growing older, I often wondered if gods were just people who got worshipped for some reason. And that in being worshipped, they became gods. That they didn't start out that way. That Zeus was a man just like any other, but all that worship and belief created him as something more. That gods are sustained by belief. (The game Okami really cemented that idea.) I wondered if I could create gods and goddesses if I wrote about them enough. I wondered if I could create people and a whole world if I wrote about it in enough detail.

And if I wrote about it and created it, would it be as real as the world in front of me? Would those people become real? If I gave them spaces to occupy, would the slots be filled? Who would go on to discover that world? Would it become another planet? Take place somewhere out there in some other galaxy? (Long ago, and far, far away?)

You'd think this was all the fanciful imaginings of a child, but no. This was a factual knowing. It was unshakable. Nothing anyone said was ever able to fully dislodge the deep knowing that all those things and more were real.

This is one thing I do not understand about Earth people. They think that just because it's in a movie it's fake. Just because it's a story in a book that it's fake. Why? What makes it fake? Because they weren't there? Because there are no pieces of paper or stone or wood describing the event? Well, there are lots of things in movies and books and news stories and classrooms that they weren't there to experience, and yet they are upheld as true. Why would Narnia be any different? Why should it be any different?

How does anyone know the story written in hieroglyphs on a stone pillar in Egypt isn't a made up story by some really creative writer 3,000 years ago? Because someone said it isn't? Is that all it takes?

Anyway...

The reason why I have this belief that all these things and more are real in some capacity is because my heart tells me it is real.

When I have a completely lucid dream about walking around on a starship, I just know it's real. When I dream my three-times-removed cousin from Ceres comes to visit my house with his sons, 10 and 12 respectively, and they gawk at the refrigerator contents while I catch up with their father...I just know it's real. When I dream I see my soul-niece Matti hanging off the ramp of a Suzy midflight to yell a message to me through a window, and my first instinct is to lecture her on the dangers of what she's doing...I know it's real. When after receiving a "thank you" note from CIC11, I dream about giving him a hug and listening to a difficulty he's going through...I know it's real. When I dream about hugging Mari because she's had some kind of upsetting experience, I really know it's real because I can feel myself hugging her as if I'm there...I can even smell her hair (told you I can smell in dreams). I just know it's real.

Nobody can tell me shit in movies, books, and dreams aren't real. Because they are. Because at one time, I lived those stories, those worlds, and even was at least one of the characters.

I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

​--Kyriel