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What’s Yours Is Mine
- 27th January 2020
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Our short story of the week is a story about truth and lies by Matthew Morgan.
Having lived in Canada, England, and Mexico, Matthew Morgan is currently writing from the UK and making his way around Europe. His website, Art of Conversation, features monthly essays exploring life, culture, and meaning through literature, cinema, and music.
Set in a museum, What’s Yours Is Mine explores how there are at least two sides to every story.
Enjoy!
‘First, you see the sweeping shape of a looming wave, perfect blue coming right at you, but it’s not moving. Then, as you follow the crowds of people through the room, you see that it’s not a wave, it’s a whale. You wonder what kind of whale it is, then you wonder if this beast is real or a model, and if it is real, when did it die and what killed it? You will have answers to all these questions if you read the information on the plaque beneath the monstrous, docile figure. Here is its Latin name and its common name; facts about its natural habitat and diet; that it is not really blue – this colour is the effect of under-lighting the museum has installed to augment what nature has made.
You examine other displays, moving among cabinets of curiosities, stages set with conquered beasts, bodies stuffed and bones strung up on wires, marionettes stripped of everything, including artifice: you are supposed to see that these have been placed here by humans, subjugated by superior powers. As you read the signs and memorise trivia to demonstrate your education to friends and family later, you feel a power that comes from knowledge. It comes from the words you are reading. In the beginning was the word, and in the end will be words. Famous last words.‘ Read more…