Let me explain to you what the Oasis is.

A couple years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to the idea of a mental construct. (For those who [heart] the CBS show The Mentalist like I do, a mental construct is similar to the “memory palace” mentioned by Jane in the episode “Red Handed.”)

A mental construct is using the imagination to engage your own mental faculties. While our own thoughts are often represented to us as “mental speech” (i.e., we talk to ourselves in our own heads), we also often daydream and fantasize. We can create a reality that exists solely within our mind that is disconnected from what is physically around us. While daydreams and fantasies spring from feelings and desires, that same application of imagination can be used as a palette to deliberately create anything conceivable on the canvas of the mind.

I was enchanted with this idea. I created a place in my head, and that place is the Oasis.

Hence the name of this site, Oasis Stories. My Oasis has grown large and I have peopled it with all sorts of characters, objects, and places. Through it I create my fiction, I study the wide mysteries of the universe through metaphysics, and I live the myth of my own life.

The Chapters of my Élan are laid out for you below; where in the Oasis will you travel to first?