I imagined that if my writing had been recycled, it would probably be reincarnated as a milk carton or a Bed, Bath, and Beyond catalog, or at the very least a roll of toilet paper. 

We used to sit out on that deck in the blistering summer heat, overlooking the Harbor Steps, the Japanese tourists taking pictures of each other in various arrangements, the kids splashing in the water fountain entirely innocent of the fact that at night homeless people sometimes pissed in it, the perpetual roar of cars passing by on the double-decker viaduct - Highway 99 - some of them coming, some of them going.  The sound of traffic left no breathing room for the ears, and so on the hottest nights when we left the window opened to invite some cool into the room, I would pretend it was the sound of a great river - a loud, gushing river with bulbous white rapids that rolled endlessly in the darkness.

 

   The city of Seattle is beautiful, and as always, the highway roared steadily like a faithful obligation to the cityscape, a metropolitan North Star.  You could smell the coffee brewing from Tully’s downstairs, and being a faithful servant to caffeine, I flew down the steps to fetch myself a cup.

 

   I was between homes that summer, spending time working in the mountains and time with my friends back in Seattle.  Being naturally protective of my “darlings”, against William Faulkner’s advise, I toted years’ worth of my writing back and forth with me from home to home, afraid that something might happen to it in my absence.  Why I thoughtlessly left it all alone in my car that first night back in Seattle I’ll never really understand.  

 

   My dirty clothes were also down in my car, and having been away from civilization for so long, washing them was a task of utmost priority.  But as I approached my car in the parking garage I noticed a spray of shattered glass on the ground next to my car.  It was then that I imagined something like an anaconda wrapping itself around my body.  It began curling and tightening and squeezing my insides up into my throat.  Then it hissed as I noticed the empty back seat.

 

   There was a city garbage can cemented to the sidewalk (who knows why – maybe so nobody could steal it?).  This was likely where all of my writing had been dumped.  I knew this because one thing was left on the top of the garbage can - a rolled up print of my favorite Edward Munch painting, The Scream.  You know the one - the silent screaming man on the bridge surrounded by a torrent of fiery orange  emotion.  Sitting pitifully in a nearby puddle of rainwater, stale cigarette butts, and miscellaneous artifacts of urban detritus was a very soggy page from the beginning of what some day might have been a novel.

 

   While this part of my life was busy marinating in the scum puddle, it finally hit me.  Everything I’d ever written was gone. The garbage trucks had come by early in the morning to clean up the city before a new batch of tourists would come traversing the waterfront and remark about how clean Seattle was compared to Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or New York.  By quirk or chance, they had spared The Scream, and left me resounding in the agony of its muted shrill.

 

   For hours, the city fell away as a friend and I lifted dumpster lids, poked around in garbage cans, and scanned the ground for clues, just in case.  I stopped at a large recycling bin, lifted the lid, and peered down at messy heaps of corrugated cardboard, shredded documents, and old newspapers.  I imagined that if my writing had been recycled, it would probably be reincarnated as a milk carton or a Bed, Bath, and Beyond catalog, or at the very least a roll of toilet paper.  “Inspirational toilet paper,” I thought with some distant semblance of pride.  “Would that count as publication?”

 

Deep in the bowels of land that lies underneath the highway, back where it meets the ground at a dark unwelcoming angle, we had all but reached the end of any lingering optimism.  This was a place where no tourist ever walked, where no good intentions ever casually roamed. Three men sat on a pipe running just above the ground.  They reminded me of that picture of construction workers eating lunch up on  that steal beam over New York City.  The only difference between them was that these guys weren’t eating lunch.  They were jabbing needles into their arms.     

 

   One of the guys looked up at me.  He’d been helping another guy tie a bandana tightly around his bicep.   The one with the bandana caught our glance, then looked back down and shoved the needle in.  A third one, wearing a wife-beater and an unbuttoned flannel shirt stood up.  His absence of words painted me suddenly and unexpectedly naked, almost as if he’d just  quickly skimmed all my lost pages.  In his  haunted eyes were volumes of stories.  I stood there holding my wrist, wrapped tightly in an Ace bandage, the result of an accident back in the woods, and fumbled with words.

 

   “Have you...seen a black...bag with someone’s writing in it?” I managed.

 

   The man looked back, shook his head. 

 

    “Someone stole it,” I said.

 

   He tipped his head towards the ground. “Oh man.”  He sighed, kicking at the dirt with a scuffed boot.  “Once I lost a book of poetry I wrote,” he said.  I  shivered at this.  “Worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

 

    We all stood in silence, blinking our eyes.

 

    I understood this man at that moment, his plight.  It seemed obvious just then how losing one’s poems, one’s stories, one’s voice could potentially be worse than heroin addiction or homelessness.  Certainly the human condition is heavily infused in our ability to communicate, to express our thoughts, feelings, emotions and whims.   So what happens to us when that is lost? 

 

     What followed was the launching of this publication.  With Under Hwy 99, I wanted to create a place where the untold story can live.  Whether based on true events or spun entirely from fabled yarns, it is my vision that this magazine will be a place where the short story and  creative non-fictional composition are defended and encouraged.  It will be a place where they can continue to progress even against the ever-increasing tides of trendiness and homogeny in which they so often must struggle simply to stay afloat.

 

~

 

Later on, I wanted to believe my friends - that everything would be okay, that something good always came out of this type of loss.  “You’ll turn over a new leaf, you’ll start over fresh,” they told me.  But it just kept sounding like something Danny Tanner might say on an episode of Full House.  It has taken me years, quite literally, of writing, reading, living, and observing to figure it out.  You see, it’s not that I don’t believe in happy endings.  It’s just that maybe they don’t have to be so predictable.

 

-EG

 

 

Photograph by Erika Corier