When I was in high school, I hated it, which isn't a surprise, but I did something relatively good because of it:  I applied for the Regional Occupation Program (ROP) and ended up working at first at The Contra Costa Times and then the local Orinda paper.  I had the notion that I'd get out of some things I hated about high school, mainly most of my fellow students.  I was right about that, but the truth of having to work hard for something was still in place, so my plan ultimately failed.

So let me first say that I did about as well in ROP as I did at high school, which is to say horribly.  I cut class, making up excuses as to why I wasn't working the obituary desk.  I pretended friends were cousins and showed them all around the building, going into the massive printing area.  I smoked cigarettes behind the building.  Finally, they kicked into the small leagues, and I sat in the small office and wrote articles about local comings and goings, people and places.

It's also where I learned that I couldn't write non-fiction because I wanted to change the stories. I made up better endings for the articles because the real endings weren't good enough.   I liked fiction.  I liked to lie.  As we see daily here on redroom, Khaled Hosseini says, "Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth."

Writing the truth seems to be the act of weaving together what is remembered to approximate what might have happened.

So here I am all these years later trying to put together  the truth, a non-fiction project, trying always to tell what happened.  I think I am telling the truth, my truth.  I'm not making up scenarios that involve rehab or my teeth.  I have not reinvented my childhood, planting myself in South Central LA, when, in fact, I grew up in Orinda.  The things I'm writing about happened to me, or so I think. 

Let me use the orange cats as an example.  Yesterday, my mother and I went out to lunch.  Earlier, she'd read my blog about the orange cats, and we talked about them as we ate.  She said, "I had forgotten that you'd brought home all the orange cats."

So had I?  Maybe not, even though I had the memory that I did, could feel them all in my carrying-home hands.  But neither of us could remember exactly where Buddy had come from, so maybe I didn't bring him home.  I think I did, but who knows? 

And she remembered a story about the first orange cat, Kitty, that I had forgotten.  A friend of mine had been holding him in her palm, and she looked down and said, "This cat is asleep!"  And when my mother told me, I suddenly remembered that, too, my friend Michelle holding the tiny sleeping kitty in her hand, the cat purring and blissed out.  That would have made my blog more interesting, and I didn't have that story to tell.

I'd also forgotten how old Eu had been when he died, though I could have researched it more fully.  But researching the past through someone else is asking them to place what they remember next to your own memory.  Is that validation?  Or texturing?

So this writing the truth thing--oft written about lately--is difficult.  I think I'm going to put a disclaimer on my finished manuscript, something like:  "I think it's true."

I think it is.

Jessica