I talked to an old, ex-friend today. She said, "Thanks for writing about me, I am flattered."

"What?"

"You know, your story and your electronic diary. You wrote about me. I am the character in your little story. I means some of it is confusing, but I am flattered to be written about."

I was dumbfounded.

"I think you missed the point of the story and stories in general. I also think you missed the point of the flickering ones and zeroes. Neither of them, the story or the numbers, were ever about identification. If you look for you in them--look to identify fully and wholeheartedly--well, you missed the point of fiction. Yes, fiction. Yes, stories--with narrators--are fiction. If you want to be--be--a character in a story, you will only be frustrated. Stories are not about being something. Stories about pieces and fragments and thoughts and events that happen in and through us. Some of them in the far past; some of them in the near past--but all of them portray an amalgamation that can never be explained through identification. You are not here. I am not here. Do you understand?"

By the time my rant was over, she had turned her attention to another friend. Oh well.