how many tattered fragments...

Cape Cod, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

"The soul is a process, not a thing: therefore you cannot put it in a box (or a book) and close the lid. It will crawl out and keep changing...I keep trying to recapture myself at different periods of my life and it is impossible because even as I write, I change. Both the passage of time and the process of writing change me. And though I try to skewer bits of reality with the point of my pen, inevitably memory fails me, words fail me, and the picture is fragmentary and false. Worse still, this falsehood will be seen by the reader as the literal truth and only I will realize how many discrepancies and holes and sins of omission I have committed, how many tattered fragments masquerade as the tapestry entire."
~Erica Jong, How to Save Your Own Life