The Importance of the Present in “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “I Speak of the City”

Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” illustrates that it is important to focus on the present due to the different possibilities of the future. The short story states:

"He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time."

This story follows a character named Yu Tsun who finds out from Dr. Stephen Albert about his ancestor Ts’ui Pên’s life work, the creation of a book about a garden of “forking paths.” Dr. Albert asserts that this book was the labyrinth that the ancestor was known for because it reveals the possibility of different timelines and parallel universes. It uses a rhizomatic structure to illustrate how day-to-day decisions can change the future or even create new ones. Through this, Borges encourages his audience to live in the moment and be careful of their actions since they could influence the future.

“I Speak of the City” by Octavio Paz reveals another aspect of this same theme. It discusses a city that is full of paradoxes. It transforms and changes over time. The poem shares:

"A novelty today, tomorrow a ruin from the past, buried and resurrected everyday..."

The poem envisions the city as both beautiful and horrible. It is full of sadness, poverty, and destruction, but it is also full of dreams and opportunities. Paz encourages the readers to dream of the future and live in the moment because the city changes constantly. It splits apart, “devours us,” and yet it also creates us. Live in the moment because there is no assured future.

Writers can take inspiration from “The Garden of Forking Paths” by recognizing that there are multiple different ways to create and end a story. A story does not always have to include a predictable ending, but it also does not necessarily have to be a full plot twist. There are many different ways for a story to progress, and every decision that a character makes should have some effect on the story itself.

The article titled “The Narrative Construction of the Self: Selfhood as a Rhizomatic Story” claims:

"Just like the motif of a patchwork quilt, a postmodern story is characterized not by an embroidered, continuous pattern but by the juxtaposition of more or less disjunctive elements. Consequently, postmodern stories are also referred to as 'untamed stories' or 'les savages narratives.'"

This creates an interesting view about what a story should be. In postmodernist stories, they are “untamed” and not necessarily linear in structure. They can jump around and end differently than expected.