Here’s a SMALL sample of a story. It’s pretty much at the begining…
"*My grandmother always warned me not to go in and bother him but I’d somehow end up in there talking to him anyway, but always with a prescription for caution.
His great fun was trying to confuse me. He did this because it was fun for him I’m sure, but also to get me to think on my own, to question everything, especially what I trusted most. Another activity he’d have me do was to read the newspaper and it’s a habit I’ve never fallen out of. I’d read articles and pick out the most interesting ones to discuss with him; ‘Man drives over fifty foot rock face, lives to tell about it’, ‘Divorce beginning upward trend’ ‘Rogue twister attacks small Canadian village, four dead’. He’d challenge me not only on the stories I picked but on why I picked them.
My grandfather was a tall man, bald toward his finish, with just enough thin black hair for the sides of head. He was very broad and heavy in his older years but not obese. The extra weight complimented him and matched his strong intentional voice. He had a wide thick neck bracing beneath his large head. His features were strong. With that polish nose he always peddled a serious expression and if he laughed it was always a controlled one. He favored slacks and a sweater with modest bedroom slippers. I was still a young boy when he died.*
AND
*As I’d get nearer to the river the litter would even dissipate in to just a slight erratic nuisance and then disappear altogether giving way to high yellow grass which yielded to sticker bushes spilling over with rabbits and bees. And finally, it was there. At my feet the same river George Washington crossed with his men; not the very spot, granted, but I didn’t care. To me it was the same smooth melodious breathing river agelessly gliding by before me right now in the heart of this metropolis. Millions upon millions of gallons of water quietly sneaked past me, drawn by its deadly gripping attraction to the concealed daylight moon. If I were lucky I’d get there just as the tide was going out so I could survey the rock-strewn banks as if I were the first man to ever walk there. At this moment, I was Americus Vespucci, the only person on the entire continent.
I remember how dejectedly absent the riverside always was of people. It was sad that this forgotten treasure lay discarded in the midst of a bustling compassionless city. The earliest inhabitants were children to this river. The river nurtured them like a newborn baby. Now it was not even a backdrop to the city but just a dumping ground with pipes shamelessly leading straight from the factories onto its banks. Did we abandon her so mindlessly in the hope of forgetting our savage past? Why didn’t we value her wealth and raw beauty? Why were we destroying her?
For me personally it was a good thing that this place was so empty because it always left me free to act out any fantasy I wanted without the judging, unwelcome eye of another person. I was an actor and this was my stage. On the day of my first breathing attack, the river was empty as usual. This time I was walking along pretending to be a Spanish explorer who had just made landfall onto this uncharted riverbank after a tumultuous journey from my motherland. Except to me it was an ocean not a river and an island, not an un-appreciating and bored city. I disembarked my wooden vessel and surveyed the landscape. I observed that there were no signs of native tribes and it was probably safe to explore. I couldn’t have walked further than a quarter-mile when I discovered a massive block of marble lying on its side amongst the rocks. It was raw but still shiny white with luminous black veins intensely dispersing themselves into a wild display. I could not believe my eyes.*