Some of my favorite finds were my words from those days when I was discovering this world and who I am. Like this, an opening to a story - autobiographical, no matter how hard I tried in my youth to mask it! Perhaps one day soon I will finish it. I can feel the ending now.
"I remember those nights I used to come down to the seashore
and walk along the train tracks beside the water. I’d find a big rock, out on
the shore’s edge, and sit. Just sit there, cross-legged and lean back on my
palms to stare at the sky. So many stars, bright ones, dull ones, too many to
count. I’d look for the constellations they taught us about in school. All I
remembered were two dippers, a bear, and something called the Evening Star,
which was really Venus. I looked up anyway, drawn by the brilliance.
The smell of salty air and the sound of the sea was all
about. Sometimes a big wave would come, crashing so violently the spray would
shoot up and get me wet. Waves. They started out as dark ridges moving toward
the shore. Then they seemed to pick up speed, and crash with a smack into the
land. They turned from blue to white, and sloshed rhythmically against a log.
The sole purpose of the log seemed just to be there at that moment in time, for
the waves.
I gained so much motivation from nature. There were the
nights I would go home, and plunk myself in front of the typewriter, trying to
type out all the great thoughts and story ideas that had just come to me. It
was important to do this before they disappeared. I would have taken the machine
with me to the beach, but there was nowhere to plug it in. Yes, I was a writer,
or at least I was trying to convince myself I was one.
It was a night like this one in the heat of the summer when
it all started. I was leaning over the White Rock pier, gazing down into the
water, completely caught up in my writer’s mind, when I felt a stranger walk up
and stand beside me. Even though I knew I didn’t know him, it was a warm
feeling. When he spoke, his voice was oddly familiar."
