I barreled my body on the couch. I don't know how to live outside of fiction.

On Jul 23, 2008, at 11:22 AM, Brad Oliver wrote:

Mel,

Seriously, though, your stories have been increasingly trending towards discussing and embellishing your own specific life experiences (especially current dramas) vis-a-vis fictionalizing vague references to your past experiences; I'm curious to know why this trend has led you here, to a point where your contribution read more like a cryptic personal message than it did a work of fiction, though to anyone besides myself, it would have read like an amazing piece of fiction...

Disclaimer: If my ego deceives me, and the person in reference is not myself, than disregard everything I just said.

"A post-modern journal, replaces the truth in a diary with something
truer…something truer than objective facts; a post-modern journal replaces dull facts with rich, intoxicating near-lies, or near-truths…"

Best,

-B

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"He caught me," she thought, as she read between the words in his email. She dilated her eyes at the screen for a moment and didn't breathe. Caught. This caught-feeling seized her, like when she was a little girl who had slapped her father, or when she stole her sister's sweater and then lied. She knew she did wrong, even though she prided herself as a person that has something right going on inside. So, caught, she takes a moment to scramble and sift through the pages of her mind.

And that's when she wonders, am I caught lying, or am I caught telling the truth? Does my face shiver and my cheeks flash and my mouth utter "uh" "but" "I'm just trying..." to excuse myself from my near-lies, or to duck from my outspoken expose trues, where all is relevant, disheveled and unshoveled with abandon?
He caught me, I thought, I am a shit writer. I'm not even a writer, just a liar or a notary.
Let me try writing fiction. It can only garnered by 2 means: (1) name mystical characters with dramatic plights, such as: "The devil went soaring over the hills to find the woman he would curse for the evening with his purple potion." or (2) be so random that it can't be followed, personifying inanimate objects and using verbs that aren't physically possible, such as: "The golfball went laughing down the hill, licking the blade of grass as it leapt, and burped right in the side of her face."

But I've probably lost you already, reader. Why should you care about me trying to be imaginative?
No. But life - like the way he tilted his head and squinted his eyes and said, "Naw, it's good," an hour ago - I could see it and feel it even though it was just his voice lighting up a corner inside my brain and body that recognized the way he moves when he says that phrase, and the way he looks back and blinks in a staccato to step back and listen and think.
What am I losing by being such a blatant liar? Am I so post-modern that I will kill my own life? Toying on the brink of reality, like a baby recklessly teeters on the sidewalk, where a dip of his feet will make him roadkill?

The caught-feeling unseized me. I started to surrender, so I could join its ranks and find out what it meant.
Life IS fiction, to me, I realized. My thoughts are in poetry, and people talk to me in quotes.
I don't know how to live outside of fiction. And as this realization came to me, my face unswelled. I barreled my body on the couch. Proud. Terrified. I don't know how to live outside of fiction.