"Enough of the Sea"

    Penguins will do something funny if a group of them sees signs of a tiger seal in the water. They will line up in rows at the edge of the ice, and peer down into the depths. The ones in the front row will push together, and the ones behind them will push forward. Eventually, one of the penguins near the forward-center portion of the throng will have to dive in, and there will either be a dangerous predator waiting, or there won’t be. That first bird will either survive, or, well, not. Either way, the rest of them will know whether they should follow or not.
    The pack of girls I was friends with in high school were locked in the same type of social struggle, except they weren’t about to dive into artic water, they were about to loose their collective virginity, and like the penguins, some of them survived, and some of them, well, did not.
 

    Walk down any street in any city on any weekday afternoon. Take a good look at each of the faces that streams past you. Try to be as aware as possible of the fact that each of these people is just as alive as you are. Each of them is the center of a story that has seemingly nothing to do with you. Try to imagine these stories, or, better yet, write them. Visualize the actual storylines, some bright red and whipping back and forth, some grey and dragging. Some of them would be simple and smooth, trailing their main character as he or she goes about their business. Some would be more complicated, tangled up in others, sometimes wrapping themselves around every other storyline nearby. If you could float above this city, you would see a web of bright lines, and you would probably be surprised at how many were connected, and how many were connected to you.
    Backstage, people you may have once known are preparing to rob a bank. They arm themselves with hockey sticks and chainsaws. Others are neglecting their duties, on the clock at their peasants’ jobs, they’re singing and dancing and smoking cigarettes and hiding from customers. Somewhere, a small girl is cutting herself to pieces. Or maybe she isn’t, maybe her blades remain clean and untouched, in a row on her shelf, while her wounds open by themselves and everything that she is comes pouring out all over the clean, white sheets. All of these people are supporting actors, and these events will all have an effect on your story.
    Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

    And I feel bad, I do, believe me. I would love to tell Sarah the story, because until I do there’ll be something missing in the space between us. I also know that she’s ready to tell me her story, about the beach, and the graffiti, and where she goes at night. The bag of cans and variously sized caps, the runesword, the snake, and everything.

   
"Enough of the Sea" was Dave's attempt for National Novel Writing Month in 2006. He is working intermittently on it, and a finished version may appear someday, but until then, the unpolished draft of the first third of the story is available in the forum.

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