Blurred: Fiction and Reality
~ Grace Tillinghast
When recalling my memories, every one is like a different, distinct image painted onto a zoetrope that spins increasingly faster until each scene is a distorted blur, blended in with the ones next to it. The walls, illustrations, and figurines of my zoetrope are not rigid and cohesive to form a perfect animated sequence, but rather a labyrinthine amalgamation of remembrances. If you were to peer into the slits of my zoetrope, a horse wouldn’t be rhythmically galloping, nor would a miniature man’s silhouette be joyfully hopping up and down like a puppet on a tethered string. Instead, my memories paint themselves on the wall in a vague, enigmatic order. If asked to remember a day in second grade, a panel of my zoetrope would focus on doodled cupcakes with heaps of frosting in the margins of cursive worksheets, another on Leonardo DaVinci’s spiraled helicopter. Other panels would be regarding sequined shirts of the Eiffel Tower from Justice, melancholy and sickeningly sweet Littmus Lozenges, crafting gaudy pink and teal homes held together by plastic lego bricks and tears from bickering with my sister about our differing architectural visions, a square book that told me of the most popular halloween costume for pets (pumpkin!), and a magical harmonica unifying Ivy Lopez, the daughter of a farm laborer in California and Friederich Schmidt, a young German boy surrounded by the rise of Nazism in his nation.
Yet, some of these vivid memories are not my own. They coincide in tandem, each one imprinting upon the walls of my zoetrope– which when spun, illustrates a convoluting array of images and experiences. Nonetheless, some of the most detailed memories do not belong to me; rather, they belong to the various characters in which I live my life through the lens’ of. Second grade Grace has her own experiences, but is also defined by the Leonardo DaVinci book she checked out of the school library until the date-due slip had to be replaced twice due to her excessive reading. I obsessed over every page of the book analyzing DaVinci’s creations, much like I spent countless nights sneaking under my panda bed sheets with a flashlight, reading Pam Munoz Ryan’s Echo, Baby Mouse’s pink and black adventures, every edition of National Geographic’s Weird But True!, the same satisfying final scene from The Westing Game, and countless other novels. While I can remember the feeling of being splashed as I barreled down the Log Flume at my local waterpark, I can just as easily recall water spraying me from Opal’s garden hose as she scrubbed Winn-Dixie’s fur; each pool of water swirls together to form one memory, both streams of equal importance to my mind.
However important to my mind, my memories have been difficult to articulate to others. When the lines between fiction and reality are legitimately blurred in your existence, and adults around you praise you for your reading and writing comprehension, your resistance to certain assignments is embarrassing to elucidate. I can recall sitting in front of my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Eveland, as she demanded our class write a four page memoir about an important experience in our life. “It should be about something that has changed your perspective, like Melody’s point of view was affected by her disability,” she instructed us, explaining the assignment’s connection to Out of My Mind, our most recent novel we had read in class. In the eight years since reading the novel, I don’t remember a single worksheet we completed or a test we took regarding the book, despite spending weeks discussing the novel together. Yet, I can recall the stormy, tense morning wherein Melody sat in the car as her parents rushed her to school, and the sickening ‘Thud!’ the car made when backing out of the rain soaked driveway, right over her toddler sister, Penny.
Both myself in the past and present could visualize and remember the scenes of the book, painting the scene onto a wall of my ever expanding and rapidly spinning zoetrope. Although I can forge the events of the novel into a picturesque animation, I could not think of a single topic pertaining to my memoir. I raged in the car ride home from school, rapid firing complaints as my tongue was soaked a vibrant blue from my Delta Sonic slushie, “I don’t have anything to say! Nothing that bad has ever happened to me, I don’t have problems like Melody”. It was true– Melody had cerebral palsy, bound to a mechanic wheelchair, her ability to move, speak, and articulate her thoughts stripped by her condition. She wasn’t the only character battling against my rejection of the assignment; The Giver’s Jonas was forced to bear the burden of his community’s memories, Salva from A Long Walk to Water fleeing the Sudanese Civil War. Despite being the same age as the characters, I was infinitely privileged and lucky compared to them, and decided on scribbling four pages of a lackluster memoir regarding my experience donating food to a homeless shelter.
I don’t recall the details of what I wrote, my mind usurped by the tragedies of each character I had ingrained into the panels of my zoetrope. My feelings about the assignment were vapid and redundant, at least compared to the feelings of revulsion that arose within me as I moved on to my next assignment, reading Tuck Everlasting. When prompted to give my thoughts regarding the novel, I consistently articulated the same message: “I don’t like this book, and I don’t know how anybody could seriously think that a ten year old and a one hundred and four year old can actually fall in love”. I envied my other classmates who were assigned Bridge to Terabithia, where Jess and Leslie’s imaginations forged a fantastical realm within their dull, tragic world. I, too, wished to construct my own myriad of creatures, but instead was forced to cushion my head on my forearms as my teacher droned through Tuck Everlasting. The entire novel was abominable and frankly bizarre, though it forged steadfast values and opinions that I’ve clung onto for the years that have followed reading it.
Tuck Everlasting is barely the beginning of my worldview being altered by the novels, articles, and stories I’ve read; more memorable ones don’t adhere to the walls of my zoetrope, but instead form the structure itself. Articulating the depths of my ardor for others has consistently been a difficulty to me, each memory of vulnerability within the zoetrope splintered by a hatchet bearing the weight of my impenetrability. When turning the pages of Crying in H-Mart, a novel picked up solely for its author, Michelle Zauner, I found myself crying alongside her, every spurned emotion I have had towards my parents reared by each word Zauner wrote, my reluctance to express my love quelled by her memoir. My faith has been challenged by the Brothers Karamozov, a fervor for self-improvement renewed by Hunter X Hunter, my ability to express myself fostered by Giovanni’s Room, my desire to pursue my passions, regardless of how conventional they maybe, reignited by The Goldfinch.
Such pieces of writing have forged my morals just as aptly as my upbringing, environment, and schooling has; I can’t imagine myself without such innate, integral beliefs embedded within the pages of my favorite novels. My zoetrope couldn’t exist without them, my memories drifting aimlessly in the depths of my brain without the structure they are now displayed in. Words of my beloved authors have guided me through the fog of my memories in the same manner Beatrice and Axl navigated the elusive mist of their land, my opinions and thought processes emerging from the haze of my mind.
In all, my zoetrope is equally comprised of my own experiences venturing into the world, and my many pilgrimages into the depths of my cherished works of literature. The stories I obsessively consume don’t simply adhere to my mind, they rotate in tandem to craft the way in which I comprehend, judge, and exist. Some panels of its walls are more profound than others, some purely exist for my own gluttonous enjoyment; either way, the memories I have made and perspective I have gained reside within me, expelling themselves into reality with each rhythmic spin of the animations crafted within my mind.