Antinovel Starts Here: Bounceback Selfie, 11-11-2011

Posted on by mikohargett

Flash forward to now – it’s a hot summer night in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s dark in my room except for the smart TV playing relaxing underwater scenes and I’m settled, in contrast to the selfie below, a whirlwind of clarifying moments (the tough kind!) as 2011 closed. Back then I lived in La Quinta, in the hot desert part of California, but I was moving closer to Los Angeles and a nicer climate. Maybe. Something was changing. Really I was moving closer to dying to myself again the third time that year, and becoming what some people called an Earth Angel. So otherworldly. I wasn’t even trying to stay in one piece anymore, and yet somehow I was held together. My life was unraveling again though, dramatically, and I could only put my feet up behind me this time.

I got a body that can put its feet up to make horns. And a Reverse Psychology beanie. Perhaps clues to my healing – “turn it around, turn it around” defy depression, surrender to the eerie stillness! Thoughts ran through my mind like squirrels then but today, nothing. Silence. Strange. Am I still here? What’s my name again? I have so many. None of them feel like me.

PS: By the way, maybe you want to know, what’s an antinovel? I’ll let the Internet tell you. This from dictionary.com/antinovel sums it up for me, why a cohesive novel to tell a story of a fragmented time? How real would that be. There’s enough fantasy in here to make this fictitious. Except for the selfies – oh and the truths, if you find any.

antinovel

[ an-tee-nov-uh l, an-tahy- ]SHOW IPA

noun

a literary work in which the author rejects the use of traditional elements of novel structure, especially in regard to development of plot and character.

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