Liar, liar

Pants on Fire*

August 6, 2014

The truth is . . . 

The Apostle, God rest his tormented soul, invokes “sighs too deep for words,” things we might say but don’t, things we might say but can’t because we can no longer reach them - or so we think. It’s no longer possible to be so honest. Yet, it’s not a matter of dishonesty; it’s not that the deposit of lies has become too thick, too tough, impenetrable — layer upon layer and not even the outermost can be scraped away. It’s nothing so dramatic, or profound.

We begin lying because we can’t quite believe the truth, though not that it is too shocking or deep but too shallow and ludicrous. And we begin not with our own lies but those others teach us, to cover that ridiculous skin-deep nakedness. But our teachers aren’t at fault; they only pass on the lies that others taught them and others taught them and so on.

       Their purpose isn’t truly mendacious — and yes, I do know what “mendacious” means. The purpose is to protect poor old Aunt Jane, to keep the bathroom door locked when she is in there (whatever she is doing). It isn’t mendacious because these lies we’re taught aren’t for the purpose of lying: they’re not even real lies; they’re conventions, traditions, covering, costumes, culture itself.

      They conceal, protect, soothe; and, most important, they provide “a different kind of truth” (not so rude, crude, embarrassingly absurd as Aunt Jane behind the bathroom door . . . whatever she is doing). They succeed, for the most part. Only occasionally do we think of peeking through the keyhole; or, only occasionally do we glance below the surface and catch a glimpse of the truth white as a corpse, floating naked, gas-filled up toward us. Face down — the “dead man’s float” you learned in order to learn to swim; face down so . . . yes . . . ass up. We are mooned by the truth, which turns out not to be profound as peering into a dead man’s eyes but comic, his ass covered with pimples.

Not shocking. And not, leider, profound as we so fondly hoped, who read Shakespeare and the book of Job, the Apostle’s epistles and the Latins and the Greeks. No, as we feared (and knew) all along, it’s farcical. The truth is more like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World than The Oresteia. “Gilligan’s Island” comes much closer to hitting the mark than The Divine Comedy. Witness:

*Pants on fire, photo by Jim Champion taken May 2, 2009: The 2009Wicker Man burns at Butser Ancient Farm.  https://secure.flickr.com/photos/treehouse1977/3499009492/in/photostream/