Assignment: Write about the first image that comes to mind in your story. And the next image. And the final image.
It’s June 1980. I stand beside the American River. Its currents run deep past jagged rocks, and I fear the possibility of falling and hitting my head, passing out, sinking into the water, tumbling downstream, drowning.
I join the group, my eighth grade classmates. Connected, I feel happy and sense intimations of romance and eternity.
On the flight to my new home in Baltimore, I look down from 36,000 feet on my life and I don’t like what I see. Memories of the past six months — the best six months of my life — stab me. My loneliness was self-inflicted but I can’t sit with that knowledge. I want to curse, to cry, to punch, to lash out, to lose myself in frantic activity, in pornographic fantasy, to flee the loss, to take rash action, push away the obvious, blindly launch myself outward, spin in circles, whirlpool down, embrace a needless martyrdom, repetition, repetition, habit, habit, the dead mother of my failure, treating others as objects, recoiling from myself, blaming others, blaming fate, blaming the church, twisting, falling, down, down, down.
