The natural truth

Six-fifteen a.m. . . .

Six-thirty a.m. . . .

Six-forty-five a.m. . . .

Seven a.m.Nature – the world, and the universe, around us – is by far the No. 1 presenter of moments of truth, and this morning at our house she joined in the debate about the nature of truth: elusive, short-lived, subjective, an approximation.

She seemed to take off this morning from where I began yesterday in the “Memoir” blog: “When truth happens, a person can see it, and see it clearly, just for an instant. In the next instant, unless it is transcribed exactly, that moment of truth becomes memory. Then the trouble starts.”

She also proved the point that is at the heart of that trouble: humans can see the truth, but we are more or less helpless to describe it, or record it faithfully, in any of the native media – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – with which we are born. These media can perceive wonderfully, but they don’t communicate or record truth very well at all. That, I believe, is why devising artificial means to preserve truth became such a driving human priority. I would much prefer the natural means. I wish I could portray to you in words an accurate record of what I saw this morning, but my brain, and the words at my disposal, are powerless to do the job.

So I have to use a camera. Karen took the photos, and I look at each of them and rock in silent laughter at the notion that such a moment of truth could be caught in words. What words? Where would I begin? Left? Right? Middle? How would I proceed, and at the speeds required to catch the moment in its unique position in space and time? This kind of slack-jawed capitulation, by a man acknowledging his true place in the world, certainly has been going on every morning for thousands of years and certainly is the spiritual and intellectual source of the technology that lets me share these captured moments of truth with you this moming.

There are four of them, all presented to Karen and me in a single morning before the day has reached 7 a.m. Because we were there, for us they are all complete truths, complete with discovery, anticipation, fulfillment and wonder, all in real time. For you, the camera can only provide a soundless, room-temperature sight snapshot. But you will fill in the rest. Truth is subjective, and no two of us will see, or feel, these moments in exactly the same way. We may, in the end, however, agree to the truth, that moments like these show a man his true place in the world.