Of scarecrows, fakery and approaching 30.

Today I realized that I like being almost 30. Since I turned 29, I have tried to convince myself that this year I actually feel older. The birthday this year was uneventful. I was ill by 6pm because my friend had passed his doctoral exams and a few of us had gone for beers and pizza. It then seemed like it would be a nice gesture to eat donuts and smoke cigarettes, mostly so we could use what we were calling “The Alfonsine lighter” (reference to Alfonso X, the Learned, King of Spain 1252-1284) that boasts astrological images. Sam and I went to César like we’ve done twice a month since moving to Berkeley in 2005 and he gave me nice presents from 4th street and some pretty Loeb editions of Ovid. None of that is very 30ish, not at all. Maybe the Ovid, but not even that, because I mostly like those editions because they are aesthetically pleasing, fit nicely in my purse with the multicolored diamonds or a pair of jeans with large pockets, and come in handy should I desire to cite the original Latin. Large pockets, purse of diamonds, burning Parliament, flaking glaze of starbucks bearclaw, 29 came in and I realized I’ve come in a little too.

When I lived alone in Alexandria in Northern Virginia, I was a scarecrow, a body that resembled a stick, with eyes that appeared large and unusual for lack of a face and because they were made of a found, unorganic material. My clothes would walk around Georgetown (the neighborhood, not the university), they drove a fast red Volkswagen Passat, went on an occasional date and had chit-chat conversations with co-workers. The scarecrow sometimes ended up on the Hill or doing work in a government office (she really hated that), rode in her car for entertainment, stood in the Smithsonian asking for the art to bring her to life, and drank liters of caffeine to make her sticks work. She invented questionnaires at her bosses’ request with phrases like “unable to judge”, “shows improvement”, and “baseline performance” and sipped cheap office tea. She danced on Thursday nights until 3am to Depeche Mode in sexy pocketless jeans. She bought many kinds of perfume because the crow figured sweet scents would move her. Made millions of photocopies. Baked muffins on Sunday. No painting, no espresso, no speedy ride in the VW, no process of reproduction made her a whole.

The scarecrow life, the Alexandria epoch, was an unlived one. Living as a pile of sticks is not even as good as thinking you’re a faker,

¶ living as a person convinced that their existence is pure invention, a product not of any personal effort or work or internal goodness, but of mere chance and a highly developed capacity to delude others.

At least the fakers have a sense of core, even if they are terrified of it. The crows can’t even find the source: there are no organs, there’s nothing to be hidden or overcome. It was Carla N. who put into live words something I’d read over and over in a novel close to my heart. We were prowling around the Library of Congress in search of lunch, me angry after I’d received a series of returned request slips with “not on Shelf”, “book misplaced”, and “have only vols. 3 and 4”. In the journal I requested that I couldn't find anywhere else in the DC area or on the East Coast, the article I needed was sliced out. I was boiling, ranting about this and that of the government and the Library (which, in general, is a wonderful resource), how my paper for some seminar would be shitty and she said:

-What, afraid they will find out?

--“Find out”?, scarecrow and I said.

-Yeah, find out. That you’re a faker. That you make it up as you go along, that you are one step away from the revelation, the unpretty one.

Unpretty revelation indeed. I’ve come to understand that fakers can generally identify other fakers: they often end up having the unpretty revelation in the presence of another faker and for a brief moment, experience the removal of the heavy trenchcoat and layers of paint disguising what they preceive as their ugly, real cores. The fakers, both the witness and the performer (their both performers, really), are then forever connected, even if they fall out of friendship.

Ugly core, fakery, I’ve found that I don’t care so much anymore. Today I realized that the scarecrow has burned to the ground. Perhaps it’s the influence of pragmatist philosophy (although, in truth, I’ve discovered I don’t really belong to we pragmatists) and notions that well, as long as you realize the limits of your idealistic, or deeply pessimistic views, as long as your consider that its all relative, and are aware that we are all spinning webs of social constructs and something-nothings, and semi-understanding, almost arrivals, near (mis) deliveries, sorta ungrammatical events of half-erasure, pseudo performances, our rewriting and producing in the passe-partout, between the lines and in the margins, then fakery is just fine.

I don’t delude myself completely. I’ll never give up the idea that I am a faker, never, because in my view, the fakers can’t survive without the possibility that they are living an illusion. To live an illusion is also to create one and thus, to be an inventor. It also allows for change at any moment and perhaps most importantly, absolves a person of a certain amount of responsibility. Should something go wrong, well, it was all just made up, my core didn’t do it.

Oh well. Like I said, it doesn’t really matter. As long as you’re not a scarecrow, maybe its ok to be paranoid that they might find out, or, for that matter, it may be just fine if you live your whole life as a faker. I figure some of what used to be my fakery has turned real, and probably some old real turned fakery. So get out that Alfonsine lighter and set all the scarecrows, all those “unable to judge”'s and “book not on shelf”’s aflame. Throw the cheap office tea to the wind! And have no guilt about misunderstanding completely, but pretending to understand fairly well: anything Derrida; go cite the Latin from the Loeb after having read only the translation, and leave the guilt to the core. The ugly revelation is sure to come someday and until then, maybe our image of its becoming will produce some interesting inventions.