11:09 pm
attempting to let my reservations glide off and feel the allure of pure creative forces take my body and slam it against the rocks that are words in sequence forming jagged sentences where my bones break and lungs rupture only when the ideas need to breathe and pause. (gasp). Wishing I had the know how to piece it together. It does not need to be a story. It needs to be an amalgam of images and scattered scenes like pennies in a wishing well. though the wishes, in this case, of course would not be kept to myself but shared like needles in alleyways or cigarettes on sun view balconies when the mountains are turning yellow pink like an exclamation point of color to close out the day.
Family heritage in a seaside town. There is a treasure to be found. Kept safe under the constant crushing waves of Spinebreak Point. Some black chest too heavy to be lifted and without a keyhole. First person voice is one of lyrical prose observations. "The town thought my grandfather crazy, as he told the story of the spinebreak treasure to children around campfires, or whenever tourists came to visit his tackle shop to rent fishing gear. He must've told it enough times that it became a rumor. It became a legend. Before he disappeared, I remember watching seabirds dive to pluck unsuspecting little fish out of the shallows at the pier and we overheard a tour guide telling of that selfsame treasure buried 'deep in the cold depths before the constant breakers and riptides made the place too hazardous for exploratory dives.' My grandfather met my eyes and winked and never told the story again."
He would often take his schooner out into calmwater cove because 'since nana died the rocking sea is all that can put me under.' The history of the town so indebted to him, in fact, he was a walking history. An artifact with lungs and legs and a swiss army knife available at all dire moments. Such as the slicing up of an apple, the cleaning of the fingernails, the carving of a name into a bench. He would always carve Trout, making the o's into squares.
He told a few versions of the Spinebreak treasure story, depending on the audience. Often it met his fancy to describe in gruesome detail how the chest ended up where it lay... with the boys stealing it out from under the noses of vengeful soothsayers of a pre-settled time. The fires always seemed to vibrate and dance with wilder permutation when he mentioned these wrathful spirits.
He was out on the water sleeping, presumably, the night that the tide took all the water away.
