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[sent]

The mistress deserves no sympathy, but the woman? Perhaps we can pity her disappointment.

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Dear Diary:

Writing about a person turns them into a character. To the reader, the character does not have the final dimension which gives life; a character does not exist outside of a mind, is not the same to every reader. A character is a fantasy, and as such can be folded into other fantasies. You can change a character's past just by wishing it different, but you cannot change a person's past. When you alter a person's past in your mind, add your fantasy to the reality of their existence, they cease to be a person and become a character. Character X is a different entity than Person X. A character and a fantasy stops when you put down the book, turn your mind to other things. A person does not stop. You do not have control over a person in the same way you have control over a character. A character you can change back and forth, but a person is stubborn and has a will of its own you must contend with. “But,” you say, “sometimes a character gets a will of its own and I can't fight it. The character tells me what to write.” This is not true. This is only strong illusion, falling prey to an illusion. It is not real. What you think is the character is not the character but your own instincts, and you can fight those. You can alter a character's reality as easily as taking a breath. A fantasy can be as absurd as you like, and parts can be deleted and altered after the fact. With life, with a true person, nothing can be changed once it has occurred. A character does not have consciousness. “But,” you say, “consciousness is self-narration. And in narration it is a character which exists and not a person.” Do you narrate your own life constantly? When not narrating, what is your proof that you are conscious? What is the difference between experience and the story of the experience? In the story of the experience the only relevant part of the character is that which connects immediately to what is happening. Everything else is unimportant and discarded. When the experience is lived there are parts of the life that are unrelated to the experience yet still exist. The moments before the experience, the moments after. These do not exist in the fantasy. The beauty of the fantasy is that it stands alone. A character is a point on a timeline, whereas a person stretches over the whole of the timeline.