I have been thinking and rethinking the story I told yesterday about myself and three friends and how I think that if I ever get around to writing a novel, it will be rooted in this group, these interactions, if I can disguise them sufficiently not to get sued. If anything, my emailed conversations with D have showed me that that moment in my life is far from over. It was a crucial one for me and I still haven’t completely recovered from B’s death. It haunts me still. Maybe it always will. But I suspect writing about it might be an interesting process, particularly writing about it fictionally. It’s a good story, one with a coherent narrative, protagonist evolution, and even, particularly in the form of one additional character in the story who stood enough outside it that I didn’t mention him yesterday, some comic relief. I have a good sense of what the architecture might be, but not such a fixed idea of how the story would go exactly. I think I’d like to see where it might take me.
As f@cebook reminds me regularly, it is a strange thing to reencounter people from your past, because you don’t just meet them, you meet old versions of yourself too. Some of those previous incarnations are easier to recognize and befriend than others. The challenge of this story for me is to face my own past weaknesses and frailties, the difference between self-image and reality.
And while I know this story the way I’ve told it probably doesn’t seem that important from the outside, I keep turning it over in my head, over and over like a piece of sea glass picked up on the beach, which at first feels smooth and comforting, worn down over time, but then yields pockmarks and roughnesses and the memory of edges sharp enough to slice you open.
Posted by harri3tspy 
