Then all this writing can feel like failure some times. It is a seduction of sorts to go back to what you have thought and written. “Ah, I was good at that moment!” I viewed literature as a long project to differentiate it from the highly capitalized, labor intensive short burst sort of projects that win out in the marketplace. But I have to recognize that the attention I give to notebooks and journals takes away from producing original stuff in the present moment even as I write in this space. The arc, rather than for fictional stories and characters is located among the non-fictional living and a few characters, many of which make up one indivisible being.

After all, isn’t it all a kind of fiction? Most people I know who have no fiction in their lives are boring and have reduced existence down to sex and violence and invested those words with great mythic qualities. Life is the real fiction with real character(s) and tales.

“Oh, my old friend, that was a mighty confluence come down on your poor head back in the day. Instant annihilation in infinite space. With no map only a series of resources that you had to dig and plow to get to. And those wild dreams of relatives screaming at you as you emerge from the water to pay unpaid bills! And yes, the main creamery making spiral trails down the mind and spirit. Perhaps it was a test of both memory and meaning. To get to the point of being clear yet full of faculty. Faith will take you there you see. Do you see now?”

“Yes, I remember the day as you put it; several years worth. The young man trying to slay the dragon only to be devoured five times and spat and shat out into the dust. Ah, but the sixth time I think I hurt the dragon, maybe even killed it. I could not have done it alone. It’s odd how our widened perceptions have made us so small and sedentary.”