Of two Minds
In this fictional narrative I represent two modes of human experience – active addiction and mindful sobriety – through the literary convention of alternating first-person limited-omniscient narrators.
- PDF / 508,986 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 81 Downloads / 162 Views
15. OF TWO MINDS A Narrative Fiction of Active Addiction and Mindful Sobriety
ABSTRACT
In this fictional narrative I represent two modes of human experience – active addiction and mindful sobriety – through the literary convention of alternating firstperson limited-omniscient narrators. Each narrator describes, interprets, and acts in the imaginary story from a singular point-of-view, with an omniscience limited to himself and the other narrator. Each narrator describes successive elements of a plot (muthos), or the causal chain of events set in motion by the imitation of human action (mimesis) (Aristotle, 1982). Each narrator also describes instances of distentio animi – literally, a spasm of mind (Augustine, 1961), or, the reflection that eludes and punctuates the imitated action of the plot upon which such reflections are based (Ricoeur, 1984). I represent active addiction as compulsive action sans reflection, excepting obsessive reflection over the objects of addiction. Mindful sobriety is represented as ethical and reflective action – a paradox in Ricoeur’s scheme, but a way of being which mindfulness and mindfulness-based practices intend toward. The literary style that animates the tale is to be taken both as a form of knowledge and as a way of doing – a methodology – that explicitly excludes the evaluative criteria of empiricism in favor of the valuative criteria of literature. Literary standards – for example, verisimilitude – privilege the attenuation of ontological and axiological distances (moral, ethical, aesthetic) that hover between readers and texts. Reading and writing fiction finds one both lost and found in a “possible world” (Ricoeur, 1979) – not the ideal locale for the newly sober addict. A brief reflection (distentio animi) follows the narrative. Keywords: addiction, mindfulness, narrative, fiction, mimesis, distentio animi LIFE IS SUFFERING
Danny (excerpt from follow-up interview) […] According to Buddhist thought life is suffering and desire is one of the lynchpins of suffering. Addiction, to me, is desire on crack. However, I think that by jettisoning addiction as a metaphor to describe it as a mental/bodily phenomenon – as a thing with formal properties like mass, color, shape, M. Powietrzyńska & K. Tobin (Eds.), Weaving Complementary Knowledge Systems and Mindfulness to Educate a Literate Citizenry for Sustainable and Healthy Lives, 235–252. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
P. WALDMAN
contour, texture, etc. – then we might short circuit it as obsession, impulse, and compulsion. That’s part of what ‘mindful sobriety’ means to me. Of course, Carsten doesn’t know anything about sobriety, mindful or otherwise. Danny’s Side of the Story First, he looks terrible, Carsten does, which means one of two things. Either he’s using or he’s in withdrawal. I’m thinking he was looking to cool it for the weekend just hoping for the best and now he’s jonesing like all hell. Of course, life happens (as it always does, story to follow) and he’s back in New York for God’s sake. So, despite
Data Loading...
