Oh my – before I start my story – I say to you: “Hey, Join the TGO Writers Group – First meeting Oct 5 – See the Happenings for time and place.”
I will have to miss the first meeting – the club is a great group of people sharing their drive to write – mostly fiction – we talk to give you confidence to write, we talk of our minds, we talk of how we think, we talk of how we create a story, and we have the joy of sharing whatever we write with TGO friends.
Now my story ———–“Your Story – Man, Woman, or Fitz”
For the first meeting I will still be on an island in the body of water connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron – maybe 50 mils south of where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down on that cold November night in 1975. I look out to the south where I can see a freighter’s light on the path the Fitz would have taken had she survived the storm – thinking of the souls lost from the Fritz’s crew, on that cold dark night, send my inner mind from “Calm” to Fear”
Last night was the second night of fall, it was total darkness – I had a flash light strapped to head, miner style. But, I kept it turned off – I have walked this road, to my barn, a 1000 times – no light needed – it was 38 degrees when I left the house at 9 pm. I wanted to stretch my legs before going to bed. Oh my, it is starting to mist. I turn on my miners light – in the beam of the light the mist looks like snow. A deep chill runs thru my body.
All of a sudden a beam of light flashes across the road 100 yards in front of me. I turn off my head light and step behind a large tree. The tree is right against the road pavement. On this remote island, the roads are more like paths than highways. I wondered what fool, like me, would be out here walking this road at this hour, on a blustering night like this.
There is that light again – there are only a dozen people who live on this dead-end road along the shore of Lake Huron – who could it be – then I see a figure stumbling, falling, staggering back up – is it a man, a teen, a woman?
I step out unto the road and shout – “Are you ok” – just as I stepped out from behind the tree the freights’s lights glide behind a protruding peninsula, the wind came upon me like a storm out of hell – the waves crashed on Huron’s shore behind me – I only heard such crashing sounds when we lived on Block Island – 12 miles out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean.
In this mystery of a sudden storm, I shout again – trying to make my voice heard over the tremendous sound of the crashing waves. “Are you OK” – The figure is so bundled up, I still could not tell if it was man, woman, or child – the figure shook it’s head and outstretched their arms – with motions telling me to “Stay away – stay away.”
I ask “Do you want help” – they gave the same non-verbal response – My god “What is going on.” Is this bundled up figure a man, woman, or child – or an alien – a ghost? My hair stands on end – so stiff it almost pushes the miner’s lamp off my head.
Then, the winds stopped – offering a mysterious calmness. In the far distance I hear the freighter’s horn announcing to other Lake vessels that they are rounding the peninsula – without thinking my head turns – for just a second – to the south toward the sound of the freighter’s horn. I look back to the figure – IT IS GONE!
Who was the figure – was it a runaway teen, a woman leaving an abusive husband, an abused woman who just killed her abusing husband, an alien from the cloud covered sky, or a ghost from the crew of the Fitz.
In the morning, I wonder, are the police looking for me ‘cause I was the last person to see the figure.
MAKE IT YOUR STORY: You pick whichever possibility you like and then you can write the total story – a work of fiction.
Normal people wonder where writers get their ideas. That is because they are not writers. See, that nighttime walk gave me lots of ideas – ideas for you. I think the writers must dwell on things that are not, then dwell on the stories that just maybe could be. That is how works of fiction start.
Writers are sort of like folks with Pareidolia. Folks with Pareidolia have the ability to look at objects and see things that are not – like faces on the surface of the moon. The dictionary says “It is a perfectly normal phenomenon.” Pareidolia, is a word from the Greek, meaning, “resembling an image.”
I would like to be a writer and I sure have the perfectly normal phenomenon called Pareidolia. My iPhone camera tells true image I saw – My PhotoShop computer tells the story I saw:
But, do not forget – more on this subject later.