Fictocritical Innovations. Pawel Cholewa

Honours thesis “Emily Coughs: A Fictocritical Exploration of the Self via Social Media” (2009), Danuta Raine’s “Essaying the Self: Ethnicity, Identity and the Fictocritical Essay” (2009), Jorge Villalobos’ “My Name Is/Mi Nombre es: Developing Internal Voices in a Quest of an Identity” (2012), Robin Hely’s “Project Neurocam: An Investigation” (2013), Lissi Athanasiou Krikelis’ “Postmodern Metafiction Revisited” (2014) and Ania Walwicz’s 2016 PhD “horse: a psychodramatic enactment of a fairytale”. As can be seen from these titles, they are similar to this work in that they are literary, often fictocritical, autobiographical, a form of storytelling and they explore personal(ised) themes, yet these themes or autobiographies are not simultaneously Polish-Australian, male or about the primary themes addressed in this study: journeys, family, education and technology.

      The works listed above relate to specific aspects of these individual writers’ lives, ideas, beliefs, identities, philosophies and experiences that make them them (i.e., motherhood, love, religion, ancestry, social media and cystic fibrosis, a Mexican-American upbringing, and so forth). These documents are unique to these individual people, though none are like this exploration because none of them are me. None of them feature a crossover or dense tapestry of interests or experiences that specifically include a fusion of travel, education, a hybridised Polish-Australian background and living in the digital world. And that unique fusion, in the combination and sequence of four experimental folios, is one of the ways that make this experimental fictocritical exploration unique, amongst a set of existing ‘fictocritical-esque’, personalised and explorative works that are already marginal, fairly radical or unorthodox in their format and structure, and certainly relatively few in number.

      From this point onwards, my cognitive self will be split in two: when referring to my ‘self’ or the multiplicity of my various ‘selves’ that feature in the creative folios, ‘I’ shall be referred to as the creative self; I will then shift to an alternate clinical persona known as the analytical self in the four theoretical theses, critiquing the creative self’s writings for their merit and fictocritical innovativeness. And when referring to my other, full, self, i.e., both my creative self and my analytical self together (i.e., the complete ‘Pawel Cholewa’), in moments where both intersect and are relevant/applicable, I will simply refer to my collective person as the author. This (somewhat) goes without saying, but not to worry! Context shall make this clear enough, to be sure.

      Henceforth, until we (you, the reader) and ‘I’ reach the conclusion of this work, the creative self shall be methodically divorced from the analytical self.

SECTION I

FOLIO ONE: Journeys

      “At Some Point Reality Needs to Become a Part Of …” (2013)

      When I first moved to Rockhampton from Melbourne in the pursuit of my doctoral studies in 2013, I tried extremely hard to engage in the culture and lifestyle of a more rural part of Australia, a different part of the world to me, obviously, since I was coming from a much ‘cooler’ (both figuratively and literally) cosmopolitan city like Melbourne.

      Here I was on the cusp of a great insight and discovery, and he was on the verge of divulging that unforgettable truth to me, and in his sixty-five years of wisdom and experience and rural understanding he would have finally been able to eloquently and concisely convey this epiphany in a way that was both relevant to him and to me. We could have adopted this and used it as a mantra; pseudo-intellectuals and wannabe academics would have quoted him for years, though if it just weren't for his incomprehensible state of intoxication, and the other intolerant gentleman he was with.

      Bleary-eyed, inarticulate, stumbling and fumbling over words and blending, churning syllables so the dribble just ran from their throats, grunting and sighing, breathing and motioning in a vague proclamation and representation of broken ‘dialogue’.

      And in between these moments of intermittent comprehension and the incoherent babbling drool of language, I sat there, eyes fixed, glued to the barstool, and listened. I listened and I sat there transfixed. I had no idea what especially I was trying to look and listen out for, but I felt that this was extremely important. This was communion, and a completely genuine integration with a new place, with a real emergence existing in a chasm within myself.

      Everything I thought I heard him say, or everything I thought I heard him primordially express, or that I was perhaps projecting myself into, listening and looking through with rose-coloured glasses, was a wish and a hope to somehow hear the things I intrinsically wanted to hear. This only happened ‘yesterday’ and I'm still not sure, but the mantras and detail and relevance poured from him in torrents, like a rush of blood to my head: “You're a realist, not a purist”; “the most important thing in the world is to be able to express ourselves”, he would say, though his own voice would rise and fall as he choked, spluttered, burped and hiccupped over his own subdued and subverted sentimentality. “At some point reality needs to become a part of …” he said, and abruptly stopped before he could ever finish. And I waited for the closure of that patently grand statement that would not come, anti-climactically. But often closure does not come, we do not receive it, and some of us, like me, are left waiting, on pins and needles, for years to come, in a state of wonder, contemplating what could have been. Most likely nothing, and he probably was merely drunk, not knowing himself what he was actually saying. But you have to wonder about the potential meaning and honesty that could have been there, in that moment. I suppose often some things are better left unsaid, if only for the pure allure and mystery of the moment; that in itself, and for oneself, can become a source of prolonged marvelling and quiet solitary contemplation or re-hashing.

      Maybe it’s because this moment and scene were so novel to me, and that is why it was so special. I don’t really know too much, though what I do know is that both of these men seemed intuitive (in a raw bucolic way that I hadn’t really come across before), one to the light, and the other to the dark. The other one had barely spoken, but he saw, cock-eyed though he was, the darkness in me almost instantly: “this is the kind of bloke who would shoot you in the leg and walk off!” he surmised, with a shrieking upward inflection of pitch and tone heralding out those last two words. And he was right, which frightens me, because I know I'm not exactly altruistic any more.

      I'm here, this is now, it’s new, and yet it is part of something older, more mature, settled, stubborn and fixated than what I can really grasp or understand. It's subjective, but it has no context, so I have no ideas that I can really cement in anything. I'm simply meandering along in this new environment, drifting within a kind of dam until hopefully my foot can latch on to something, at which point I can start simulating and generating algae in a pool of water, a pond of my own.

      These are the babbling truths and confronting conservative value systems that I need to start developing on my own, integrating with, appreciating and understanding if I'm to grow at all here from now on. The need to go off and analyse what a fool hasn’t been trying to say probably won’t serve any purpose but to further distance and isolate me from the truth I am trying so conscientiously to uncover.

      And having gone off and walked, tangentially and diagonally across pathways in sober gardens, I have very little to no grounding as to what can possibly happen from this point onwards. Lost and disconnected I repeat my steps and try to adopt a humorous approach, chuckling at the same jokes and commentaries; the greenery and comedy of it all will save me as I keep pacing conservatively, never sitting mindfully, patiently or still enough to produce any grime of my own, and yet I’m infested with ‘this’ knowledge, and that I might ground myself, and refuse to take charge, in confidence.

A Daze to Come True (2014)

      For I find myself just wanting to wander around, from place to place, not really doing much—ambling. If I had to choose or describe a vocation, it would be this. Observing things, not with a keen eye, or not the most important things, but merely the vague and the mundane, as they appear or as they come to me. I may turn down a street or an alleyway, into a random building, a café or a restaurant egged on by a gust of wind, a flutter that ushers me this way or that