Meditation in the Reality of Fiction

By Jonathan Rey Lee

Perhaps "it is so difficult to find the beginning"1 because our first words are always borrowed. "Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning," to dive into ongoing processes of experience and articulation-the complex dance we call life-that both precede us and proceed without us. We are rightly wary of stepping into such an inexorable flow of words and ideas because we always risk being carried away by their force, no matter how hard we struggle to begin at the beginning "And not try to go further back." We are always already underway. The difficulty is initiating an undertaking that begets new life, rather than an undertaking that merely embalms the past/passed. To make a beginning is to act with purpose, to actively respond to the whirl of ongoing activities that surround and constitute a life. The purpose of this textual endeavor, which does and does not begin here, is meditative: I strive towards moments of realization, philosophical reflections that arise from active participation in fictional experience. Like many others, my life is surrounded and penetrated with a web of texts and fictions without which I would not quite be myself. This project is about the reality of fiction, the potential of essentially unreal stories to have a real impact on real lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1835202276
• ISBN13: 9781835202272
• Release Date: June 2023
• Publisher: Remod
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"