[MD] Avatars, SOM and me

[John Carl]

You had to suffer shipwreck though your own efforts before you were ready to
seize the lifebelt he threw you.... The Master knows you and each of his
pupils much better than we know ourselves.  He reads in the souls of his
pupils more than they care to admit.

Eugen Herrigel, Zen and the Art of Archery


So I was thinking the other day, about writing.  My brother in law wrote a
book about when he and Lu were kids growing up in Africa and he used a
literary device, I think it's called the "second person objective" or
something like that.  It went something like this:

You walk down the hall to get a glass of water, you see that there is a need
for another log on the fire and the cat needs to come in, so you set down
your glass and open the woodstove...

I guess it could be interesting if done really well, but coming from pure
narcissism it's just real annoying.  It flows from the assumption that
everybody else would see things the way I see them, naturally.

But then, he's annoying like that so I guess it makes sense that his writing
would be too.


Now, Pirsig, on the other hand, writes about himself in the third person,
while narrating from the first person:  I used to know this guy, I knew him
really well.  He's gone now, but not forgotten for he turned into me.

See, the "me" that is in the past is just as much an entity separate from
who I am now, than any other person I've read about in history books.  But
we don't think like that.  We should, but we don't.  But writing that way
sort of forces you to confront the real situation as it is, and to an
extent, by playing with the definitions of self, frees you from the
ego-attachment to your old self.

And really, when I'm writing about the guy I used to be, why should I do him
any favors?  He's certainly never done me any.  If he had any consideration
for me, he'd have dieted and exercized more and taken better care of his
body so that when it came time for me to use it, I'd be in real good shape.

On the other hand, I can't criticize him too hard because if I was in his
position, I'd probably have done the same thing.  In fact, that's what
happened.

Anyway, I wonder if any of you literary types are familiar with this
technique and know what it's called.  Lots of writers have referred to their
past in the third person, but not from the ongoing narration of the first
person.  Pirsig did it because his past person was separated from his
present person by electroshock therapy, but it doesn't take anything that
dramatic to realize the separation.  All it takes is a realization of  a
momentary separation between him and me.