History & Fantasy

Startling reality – past & future only exist as stories in our mind.

Spot on!  Events happen.  Facts about them are unchanged, no matter how many years go past.  Dates – same.  People – same.  Action – same. 

Example:  My 11-year old brother died suddenly on Easter Monday, leaving a gap of 8 years between my next sibling & myself, the youngest.  That’s reality (in spite of my oft-dreamed dream of Ian strolling out of Ed Allen’s garage, as if nothing had happened, no years had passed).  

Ah, but everything else is not so clear.  

The stories each member of Ian's family, each one of his friends, his classmates, his teachers, other adults, other kids, spun around that relatively short statement of fact ~ ah, those differ & sometimes widely, sometimes so widely as to make one wonder if the stories connect to the same event.  

Certainly, everyone in Ian's family came up with our own stories around that life-changing death, each one of them gospel to each one of us. 

We all - every human being - come up with our personal histories, our own fantasies about the future.  Stories spin off of thoughts, new thoughts spin off of old stories, until the only thing they have in common - whether they're Personal History and/or Fantasy - is that they're fiction.