This is one of my characters that I have been writing...

My new story is first person, but interspersed within the story are letters and journal entries from her boyfriend's journal. This is one of them. I know you can hear my voice in this.


“I WILL REMEMBER YOUR SMALL ROOM, THE FEEL OF YOU, THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW, YOUR RECORDS, YOUR BOOKS, OUR MORNING COFFEE, OUR NOONS OUR NIGHTS, OUR BODIES SPILLED TOGETHER, SLEEPING, THE TINY FLOWING CURRENTS, IMMEDIATE AND FOREVER, YOUR LEG MY LEG, YOUR ARM MY ARM, YOUR SMILE AND THE WARMTH OF YOU WHO MADE ME LAUGH AGAIN.”

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

When I was a child, beauty and magic was everywhere. I found it in the big yard, in forests and rocks and waters. Sometime after I had become what is considered an adult, I lost the beauty and magic. At first I didn’t realize it was gone, just that everything about life irritated or prickled or drew blood. This was a slow time where the beauty and magic would occasionally flirt with me while I was under the influence of one thing or another, but it would escape, slipping from my fingers. I would be left with the still gripping hand, saying “What was that? For a second, I remembered something…”

Eventually, the darkness became so intense that I could never see those snatches of beauty and magic. I sought the catharsis of other things, various distractions that reminded my unconscious mind of the hidden, the forgotten, the treasure of my life. Time
passed, and as it did, it became apparent to me that the world and its outside forces were not the root of my problem, it came from within. The memory of the beauty and magic returned with full force, and instead of being a comfort, it became a tormentor.
It taunted me with its smells in a warm spring day or the solemn silence of watching snow fall on a holy winter night. It hung and wavered like crepe paper streamers left after a party; just shreds of the happy times gone past.

I rack my memory. How did I see the beauty and magic when I was a child? How did it leave me? Or worse still, is it so buried and hidden and remote that it is impossible to retrieve? I live in a shell of what I was, an empty room that echoes and stills and remembers what used to be but is no more.

So I follow the song’s advice and party ‘til I pass out, drink ‘til your dead but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m waiting; either for the death or the complete madness that brings the beauty and magic back to me.

So what? It's Christmas

1. What natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones, floods, landslides, etc) is your area prone to?

Hurricanes. Last summer we felt the DC earthquake. My sister. Yeah...

2. What natural disasters have you experienced firsthand?

Hurricanes. In particular, Hurricane Fran, 1996.



This is Oak Island, NC. where my family's beach house was, before we sold it in 2005. The worst thing I saw was this little crushed house that still bore it's name sign:
Our Dream. I don't know if I have ever cried so hard in my life as I did at that sight.

3. Have you ever been evacuated due to a natural disaster?

Back in the seventies, we were down during a hurricane. A Coast Guard officer came to our door. I remember his yellow slicker blowing in the furious winds. He told us to evacuate and Daddy said we'd be all right. The officer took out a clip board and asked him the name and number of our next of kin. When we left (and we did) the water was coming across the road and sea foam blew around like cotton.

4. Have you made/do you make any special preparations in case of natural disaster where you live?

No. Just know it is coming, and that wait for the endless howls of the wind.

5. What type of natural disaster scares you the most?

The hurricanes used to, but since the house is no longer my own I don't fear them as much. Of course, I know that if I discovered it had been destroyed (along with the pieces of my heart I left in there) I would be crushed.