This issue of published memoirs being revealed as fictions has been buzzing like a bee in my cranium for the past few days. I knew there was something more I wanted to say about it but I wasn't sure how to say it. I'm still not sure I can put language to it, but I want to try.

One reason I could imagine for writing a fake memoir is that it would be a way to paint a life in a way that seems true to you without your having to prove it in the usual way with facts. It's a way of "proving" something only by imagining it in detail that makes it seem true to you.

One of the four measurements taken by the Myers-Briggs Personality test is Sensate versus Intuitive. A person with a high Sensate score needs factual proof for something in order to believe it, while a person with a high Intuitive score can believe in something if their intuition tells them it's true.

I probably don't need to add that my Intuitive score is about as high as it can be. To figure out if I believe in something, I pose it to myself and ask if it's true, and I get an answer from inside.

I have several images for this process of getting an answer from inside. One is of reaching my hand deep down to touch my fingertip or my palm to a wide flagstone that's a temperature that I imagine the earth would be several fathoms underground. Another is of feeling a vibration that sets a deep-pitched bell resonating so softly that it can't quite be called ringing. Yet another is of hearing a piano string sound faintly when another string at the same pitch has been plucked.

To an Intuitive person like myself, this touching/resonating/sounding is the equivalent of proof.

I think this is why I've been finding magazine articles on science so irritating lately. Newsweek in particular seems fixated on reporting on scientific studies about everything under the sun, including emotional issues like compulsion and addiction. Reading about these studies just leaves me feeling tired because the factual proof they supposedly offer seems so irrelevant.

I know it's not irrelevant, though. In fact, the things I believe to be true most likely can be proven scientifically, or will be at some time in the future. But for now, I guess I wish others could believe as I do, because something inside tells them to.