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When I ope my lips, let no dog bark

Do you ever find that your conscience is misting over? Not so much in self-reproach for something which at the time seemed appropriate, but for something which if repeated now, however innocently, is regrettable? Of course, I recognize that attitudes change; what was once common practice may now be seen in a different light, judged by different rules: Zeitgeist seldom sleeps for long.

Since my retirement, I have had more time to organize my thoughts and either jot them down on a scrap of paper or fashion them into essays; if I don’t do so right away though, they occasionally refashion themselves -my memory often works like that. Sometimes I forget what I used to think about things, and like Michel de Montaigne (although without the talent) I may contradict myself -perhaps because I’ve forgotten that I once had a different opinion, but more likely, forgotten that I had even written about the matter before.

Lately I have taken to searching my archives to see if I have already made use of a topic and, if so, whether my ideas have evolved since then. It’s interesting to approach a subject from a different temporal perspective, but whether it’s me or the topic that has evolved is often unclear. In such cases I try to phrase things differently, but sometimes I prefer the original approach and, like discovering a once favourite shirt in a dark corner of the closet, I try it on again. I feel no guilt about that; and anyway, I haven’t changed that much, so it usually seems to fit.

But now I’m not as sure. Not since I happened upon an article which suggested that plagiarism was simply claiming that some ideas or words written elsewhere were now your own. Even though it did not say what you would call using your own words or ideas again, I am still worried. Can you really plagiarize yourself?

Sometimes, the guys in our Wednesday morning coffee meetings in the Food Court, read my stuff. Although no one seems to want to admit to that, every once in a while if I introduce a controversial opinion that I’ve written about, I can see their eyes bumping into each other as if to acknowledge they recognize it from somewhere. Usually a few poignant eye-rollings calm the water, but occasionally someone will challenge me: Ahmed, for example.

“Why do you keep reusing things, G?” he said out of the blue in front of the group one day.

I tried to challenge him with a disdainful stare, but I’ve never been good at disdain, and his eyebrows overrode mine. “What do you mean Ahmed…?” I replied, steeling myself for his usual reductionist reply.

Ahmed is older and wiser than me and I always hope he’ll withdraw his question for fear of offending me if I ask for clarification. English isn’t his first language, and I think he sometimes has trouble if I stray too far from conventional usage. Any unusual Canadian expressions seem to confuse him if they’re unlike the ones he grew up with in Egypt; I remember my idea of drawing snow-angels in my head seemed unfathomable. My use of made-to-measure figures of speech is also a frequent issue for him.

 “You often seem to talk about ‘flying eyes’ in your stories…”

“They’re essays, not stories, Ahmi.” For some reason I thought I should limit whatever damage he was referring to: only my essays seemed to see the light of other eyes; my stories never made it that far.

“Whatever. Anyway, I kind of liked the image of eyes flying back and forth between things in your latest story, but I was pretty sure I’d seen it before…” His eyes twinkled mischievously as he glanced around the table. “So I checked through some of your past stuff, and sure enough: same words, same ideas! You didn’t even credit the other story like you’re supposed to when you ‘borrow’ things from a different one.” He sat back in his seat and smiled at everybody. “That’s plagiarism, isn’t it G?”

“They’re essays, Ahmed! And anyway sometimes I do mention that I’d written about the subject before…” But it was the essay, not the metaphor I would be crediting -the substance, not the colour. Still, it got me worried; I mean who else had noticed? Did my use of similar ‘flying eyes’ descriptions suggest that I only had a limited repertoire of characterizations? An impoverished imagination? And if I were a professor marking a series of essays in a class and the same student kept using the same portrayal time and time again, what would I think? Even Chat GPT would know better than to do that… if it actually knows anything, that is.

But, should I really be criticized for inadequate citation of my own writings? I mean, if I borrow my own invented metaphor, surely I own it as well as the context. And anyway, what is the timeframe for ownership? Would I still have to list the Quarto number of a Shakespearean sonnet in order to use one of its pithy sayings; could I use ‘wine dark sea’ -a well-known quote from the ancient writings of Homer without referencing it? How about the Bible…?

And surely metaphors aren’t patented. There must be a difference between using somebody’s metaphor without permission and copying a whole paragraph of one of their ideas and pretending it was me who had done the ground work to establish the argument.

I would never do that with my stuff though, because each time I think about something, I end up coming to a different conclusion than before; in fact, usually I can’t predict where any of my ideas are going until I get there; for me, it’s seldom the destination, but the journey that matters.  

In a way, though, perhaps reusing parts of my own figures of speech might lead people like Ahmed to read more of my stuff -either because they like it, or because they’re attempting to find fault with it. Whichever way, it hangs my words out to dry on their clotheslines as well as mine. Sunlight is usually good for a writer…

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