One good reason to tell a tale when you could be telling the truth?  Because….well,  anything but the truth. The truth is way too difficult to tackle bare handed. You can’t grasp it.  It’s prickly. It burns. It bites.  Adopt the pose of the hunter. Wear a disguise. Pretend you are busy with something else. Feign disinterest with the truth and practice total preoccupation with your tale. Achieve total preoccupation with your tale and then somewhere, in the deep dark of your heart, a light will shine on what is real, what is true.

Because here’s the paradox: the truth is where you always arrive when you meddle in the tale.

“perhaps the narrator thinks that he is producing only variations on a theme, whereas actually he ends up telling us what is in his heart.”  Italo Calvino