As I write these blog posts a month after these events happen, I find myself following along an interesting line of thought. I’m seeing that my recall, interpretation, and narrative voice are being affected by the books I’m reading and thoughts I’m having now, a month later. In each post I almost feel as though I’m writing two posts. I’m telling you explicitly about the events that occurred and I’m telling you implicitly or perhaps subconsciously about what I’m thinking or feeling now.
For example, when I wrote the “Ghosts in the Night” post, I was reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And I could feel as I wrote that a different frame was being applied to the thoughts and ideas I was expressing. My style was more journalistic, more pensive, more mysterious. And as I wrote my lastest post about being in Pokhara, I struggled to relate the feelings I was having then because I’ve since had changes in my thinking and attitude that are relevant to the topics I was writing about.
All narrative is, of course, colored not just by the writer’s changing viewpoint but also that of the reader. But I wonder now, as this fact manifests itself to me so vividly in my writing, how often we read narratives and descriptions and take them as being fixed, as being objective? Prior to starting this blog, I had already thought about this topic. I had thought about the meaning of authenticity and the inherent unreliability of all narrative. And yet I was still surprised at how strongly I had this sensation when I was writing! If people who think about these things can still be surprised by their force, what does that imply for people who have never been exposed to these ideas at all?