the short stories in the Life of Fiction collection

behind every life is a story

Mark Twain

If you are born in New Zealand you are born blessed, for the closest river to your place of birth becomes your river, the closest mountain, your mountain. The pull of your mountain, your maunga, is powerful, and hard to resist. But when you grow up fatherless at the end of the railroad you grow up wondering what lies at the other end of the line. So one night when still a boy I gathered all my strength and broke free from the pull of my maunga. I set off to find where the tracks might lead.

They led me all over the world.

At first I traveled in the dark, blinkered by the prism of parochial experience. Travel, they say, broadens the mind. What a hollow trope that is. Mostly, travel confirms prejudice. You may go off “to see the world,” but you leave already assured there is no place like home. And you carry your narrow mind with you as easily as you carry your socks.

Slowly, very slowly, I came to understand that “no place like home” is an insidious expression. Every nation is ninety-percent fictional, with a chasm between the fantasy country united by collective mythology where folks like to think they live, and the actual place where we’re born, eat breakfast, file taxes, and die. The chasm is wide, and easy to fall into. I’m a U.S. citizen now, and proud to call this place my home, but I recognize that I’m living in one of the most propagandized nations in the world. It’s not North Korea, it’s not China or Russia, but take a knee during the national anthem and the wrath of God will descend upon you. Know why? Because “this is the greatest country in the world.” No place like it. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

When the self-serving instruments of power, religion, media and commerce align to reinforce and promote this exclusionary credo, hard borders — of geography and also of culture and of thought — are created. We go backwards. We are driven apart. Nationalism thrives. Exceptionalism thrives. A ruling elite is endowed, standing ready to defend its prerogatives with vicious intent. Our mutual humanity is…

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