The core of it is true

I’ve been catching up on news, on the tabs open on my computer, the articles I’ve been saving to read. Actually I was embarrassed into doing this by my daughter who immediately seized upon my psychotic condition: the inability to let go. I always think I’ll come back to finishing that story, article etc later. Then later turns into 37 tabs on my laptop.

Mom! What’s going on!?

So today I dedicated my morning to determining if the open tabs are something I really want to read, have expired, or no longer relevant. With the dozen or so tabs left I began plowing through them, skimming or actually reading.

In the middle of this process I ended up opening a few more doors. I stumbled across an article in Vanity Fair online about the new movie Lady Bird. One of the pieces had to do with the art director and how he was able to make the movie look like a memory. He simply took it down a generation like a Xerox making a copy of a copy. Which is a good way of describing a memory. Essentially an open tab in our brain that gets corrupted by neglect, diminished by layers of overcopying, wish fulfillment, projection.

An interviewer asked the writer and director Greta Gerwig about her autobiographical movie. She had to backpedal. It is not autobiographical. At its core it is autobiographical. But also a work of fiction. This is a lot how I write—both memoir and fiction. Blurring the genres.

Because I try not to get stuck on definitions, or hung up on truth, I can keep going—hoping something sticks.

As many times as I close a tab, a new one opens.