“Missing Person” Chapter 1 “Go West, Young Man” (starter)

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I used to have a recurring dream. A dream where I was on a boat out on the sea, off the coast of Africa. I didn’t know anyone else on the ship, except for one person, and she was a reason I was on that ship to begin with. The details of the dream would become sketchy each time…like a collage of events taken out of time, space and context. Did I see her smile at me or “the camera” did we swim in a pool with blue and green rocks on the bottom or was I remembering an aquarium I used to own?

I admit, I have forgotten. The dreams I have these days are still about her, and they still take place on a small island, but the dream is more like real life. The water lies still and murky and a small boat lies capsized next to a rocky atoll which I always find myself standing on, looking out at the decrepit scene before me. It’s so silent that I can hear my heart breaking as I step down from the atoll and into the water which is not too deep and then onto the beach.

The drab beach, the island appears dead--and it probably is--in my mind, as everything looks grey and heavy. Each time I recall this dream I find myself looking out into the ocean—not a bird in sky; everything’s hazy and then I usually wake up, but at times the dream changes...

I turned my hand back to the island and saw a figure in the distance, waving to me. I couldn’t make out who it was, but the silhouette kept waving to me, waving as in a “come here” wave, not one of goodbye. With a desire to figure out the mystery, I’d take a step away from the beach and with that one step, everything changed:

The small boat that was sunken into the water was once again floating on the waves. The water turned a translucent blue and I could see fish darting through the current of tide…which I could then hear. Sound, color, feeling, everything came as I stepped further away from the shore and closer to the person calling out to me. I didn’t feel like me, the lost twenty-three year-old, because at that point, I wasn’t, I was ten years younger, reliving the dreams I used to have.

And with every step I took, she would move further and further away..

As you live, people come in and out of your life.
You may have only seconds or all the time in the world..

I. Go West Young Man

We left Alabama on June 9th, 1990...it was not fun day for me. Sure, I could find a "bright side" to leaving the south: I'd never again have to see a cockroach...alive and crawling on me as I laid in front of the television watching "Star Trek". That being said, I concentrated more on the sepia tone of life: I was leaving my friend, school-everything I knew--in the past year...and I would be leaving her behind, quite possibly never getting to see her again. Kind of wished I had thought of writing to her and having the letter forwarded but while wallowing away in self-pity and wonton despair...I didn't try to. Although I knew where she lived and could have walked or rode a borrowed bicycle to her house to obtain the street number, write a letter and HOPE that it would bounce from Prattville to wherever in the world, maybe Belgium, that she ended up going to.

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