Is it really over?

I had my first internet dream last night. I'd opened the Fifth Muse's blog and above her Well, it is time for a break posting, there was a new posting. It was completely different from her previous postings because it had buttons to download podcasts.

The podcasts were recordings of her and R. The first one ran 90 seconds and it became clear as it played that it was R and 5M at marriage class. I could hear Father Joe in the background using his charismatic inflections, while 5M muttered "I can't take it, I'm going to kill him" and R whispered "just a few more minutes, let it go a few more minutes and we're out of here."

Then I woke up. After I turned on the computer, I opened IE (6.0 with a screen res of 1280x1024 on a Rogers connection for those of you who check on those things) and saw that it really had been only a dream. She has "other more important things to do."

Which isn't such a big surprise. She's been infrequent with the postings lately. Engaged bliss appears to be as bad for blogging as it is for situation comedies.

As for the bile, of course there's the whole internet anonymity thing that seems to let us be rude to each other.

Given that 5M was open to having her blog gain a wider following, or move it to some other published form, I've often wondered how she could be so free with writing that is strongly based on the reality of her life.

Philip Roth's protagonist, Nathan Zuckerman, seems to be Roth's alter-ego. Zuckerman encounters enormous hostility from relatives and former friends who feel they have been cruelly or even anti-semitically portrayed in his books. I've always assumed that Roth was writing from experience, and marvelled that this hostility didn't stop him dead in his tracks.

I know an author who has written some novels and short stories that are based completely on her real life. Some of the characters do not come out sympathetically. (She is fair enough that it sometimes includes her protagonist.) I asked her once how the reaction of the people she writes about affects her.

"It gives me pause," she replied, "I'm not sure I can do it any more." Since then, she has switched to pure fiction and seems to be doing well with it.