possession.

I bought the book. Haven’t read it yet. Haven’t seen the movie, either, but I hate reading a book after I see the movie because the visuals are fixed. The author’s description of the character may or may not match up with the actor playing her/him, but the author’s version is the original conceit and should be given preference. Obviously, I’m not postmodern enough. In my world, the author still lives.

Fortunately, The Guru is not based on a book, as far as I know. Which means that Heather Graham, whom I truly believe is not from this planet, can be Sharona without interruption from an author. I like her in this role, the wise porn star who pretends not to be to snare her gay firefighter for a life of picket-fenced marital bliss. Is that what Relationships are about? Deceit and deception, not necessarily of the other person, but of yourself? Is it possible that you can turn yourself into someone else’s version of yourself? Or give it a good college try? The director’s cut, rather than the author’s? The movie says no. It says that you should be loved for the “real” you, whomever that is, and that, within love, one should be able to be completely open and honest without censure.

Is that possible, though? I don’t know that we can even fully see ourselves. I know who I think I am. I know my view of the world. But I don’t truly know what other people think of me or how I appear to them. And that’s what is implied by the possessive pronoun – the other person’s version of you.

I’ve not had the experience of being referred to as “my” kT before. I don’t think I’d like it. I’m not keen on the possessiveness implied in the statement. In standard Irish parlance, though, it is common to refer to one’s family with plural possessives. You call a brother or a child, “our Charlie,” distinguishing him from other Charlies that might be floating about in the ‘verse. Those are someone else’s Charlies. “Our” Katie would have been my great-grandmother. We are American-ized enough through those subsequent generations to have lost the possessiveness of familial ties. I’m not sure if that loss is to be mourned or embraced. Tradition may be constrictive, but at least you knew who you were and where you stood from day one.

I am not anyone’s. In this day of prized individualism, my own world view reigns supreme. This is My world. I create it with my choices and attitudes. It isn’t that I’ve created the rest of you – no more than I created Sharona in the first place – but that I allow you into my sphere because I value the impact you have on my world. Without me, My world ceases to exist. Trees may still fall in the forest, but I won’t hear them and they therefore don’t much impact me. There is the whole wing-flap of a butterfly thing. I agree; we are all connected. But at the same time, without my experience of it, I have no world.

So to some degree, we must possess to experience. But like the famed observer, we change what we possess/observe in the act of observing/possessing. And therefore create change. We cannot cross the same river twice, for in crossing, we have effected change. Maybe that’s the object lesson in all of this: You make an impact. So take responsibility for that and live your life accordingly.

Long live The Author.