Some moments in life weld themselves in your memory, so stark and vivid that each time you think of them, it feels as though you are living those moments again. For me, one of those happened at around 2 a.m. on the Santa Monica pier, decades ago. When our children were little my late husband and I would go night-fishing there. We would hire the teenager who lived next door to sleep on our couch, and off we would go. My husband loved fishing, and knew everything about it - I used to tie a string to a stick to “fish” with my Dad. Both of us relished these late night outings, though - it was time for just the two of us at a point in life where such things are rare. As entry to the pier was free it was something we could afford.
fishing gadget, old men alone, a few old women alone, hardly ever any other couples. We would walk out along the pier, choosing our spot, and I would settle in, leaning on the rail, a few feet from my husband, my line in the water, feeling the salt spray and enjoying the quiet of our time together, the city lights a backdrop and the sounds of the city at night our soundtrack.
any hesitation, grabbed the thrashing shark by the tail, pulled it up, swung it over his head, and, backlit by the city lights, swinging in a large arc, bashed the entire creature, hard, into the boards to stun it, then spun and threw it over the rail and back into the ocean. Everyone rushed to the rail to watch the creature as it hit the water. We heard the smack, saw the spray rise, and then the shark begin to move again, at first just small movements, and then it thrashed once, hard, and swam away. It lived.
An odd assortment of people would be there, on that pier, every time we went. People with old plastic lawn chairs and coolers of beer, people with impressive tackle-boxes filled with every magic
At that time, the pier was most decidedly not in its heyday - there were rumblings in the City about dismantling it. Those who came, especially those who came late night, were not coming for the iconic rides or shops - they were there to fish under the stars while they still could.
Lots of fish were caught there, some worth keeping, some released back amid grumbles, and some “real catches.” You’d be leaning over, listening to the surf, watching the lights glow against the waves, when suddenly the low murmur of voices along the pier would change in tenor, there’d be a rustle as people moved closer to whoever had hooked a good one, and people would wait to watch the fish reeled in, then either admire or sneer.
I saw more than one fish flopping on the pier boards, gasping, dying. It was the part of those evenings I hated. Some few were more merciful, putting the fish they caught in buckets of water, at least until they got them home. But everyone wanted to watch the catch itself.
One night, voices rose higher than usual, and the a larger crowd than usual gathered around the man whose pole pent hard over into the water. At one point, the voices became a collective gasp, and the crowd around him visibly moved back and away among murmurs of “shark! shark!.....” I was standing just a few feet down the rail from this fisherman, and the crowd around him had pulled back well away as the shark was pulled over, flying over the head of the husky fisherman, and landing on the boards, it’s long form (three feet? four?) thrashed and mouth worked for air, teeth showing.
I watched as the fisherman in question reached down, cut his line, and then, quickly, without
Few images have stayed in my head as that one has over the years - the dark form of the big man, arm swinging in an arc with the still-thrashing shark in the air above him, swinging around - up, over, and down, all the city lights behind him, all the people huddling back in a dark mass.
It happened so fast, and it was so long ago, that I don’t remember what I was feeling at the time, but I do remember the silence in which my husband and I leaned over the rail, watching, waiting to see this creature begin to move again, and the breath that escaped me as he did. It was a moment that crystallized for me all those times I had seen a salmon or a trout or any other fish, mouth working and gasping, thrashing on the ground or against the pier as it died, and the dark tension that would grip my chest each time I saw it.
Those were moments that sent me to a place we all fear but don’t think about - the day coming when all of us gasp for life, trapped in a battle we know we can’t win, against an enemy no one can defeat. And all those moments became one that night on the pier.
Years later I was faced with a challenge - twice. First from a teacher in a delightful and fun write-sci-fi workshop, and later by the wonderful women in my writing group - write a scifi story. I’d been a sci fi fan all my life, but thought I couldn’t write such a story worth reading. But, the Irish in me wouldn’t let me back away from a dare. The workshop leader wanted us to write something about a creature that was the last of his/her kind. The writing group wanted me to just shut up and do it. Not one to follow directions exactly (ever), I began a story in the workshop that day about a creature the first of its kind - a man who could actually live in the minds of other living things - not reading their minds, but experiencing their life with them, directly, from behind their eyes. He couldn’t, at first, control these strange excursions into another life, and people thought he was insane - until it started happening to others.
A few months later, when the writing group issued their challenge to me, I thought of that unfinished story, and began again - a group of three people, who all find themselves behind the eyes of a cougar just as it’s being shot by a farmer, and go on to become the first members of a new group of humans, a new evolution of humankind, able to (almost) completely connect with other living creatures - and the “almost” is the thing that complicates the story. It became the best-selling thing I’ve ever written: my sci-fi novel Somewhere Never Traveled.
What does this novel have to do with that long-ago stunned and released shark? It was that moment on the pier, and all the other moments it brought into focus for me, that allowed me to think what it would be like, to feel it fully, to be one of those creatures at that moment of capture, of terror, of fighting for life. That moment, and what it implied for me, was the essence of the desperation to connect we as humans cannot escape. Writers, much like actors, must connect to characters, to the world, to people around the, so moments that push you towards that are essential to a writer’s development. You can’t choose them, they choose you, and you need to be ready. How critical this is reminds me of words written by Peter Shaffer in his play Equus:
"A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power.... Moments snap together like magnets….. Why?
….I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But why at the start they were ever magnetized at all--just those particular moments of experience and no others--I don't know."
Those moments - the shark sailing and flailing through the night air above the pier, all forged together with all the moments I’d watched a fish gasp and struggle for air, or a puppy sigh out its last and then go still, or any living creature sigh and struggle and surrender - they became one collective moment in my mind, the forge that let me connect and empathize, and that let me imagine a time when we all could connect in this way.
If anything, the lesson here goes back to what so many writers and writing teachers have said - pay attention, and let go of what you’re supposed to think, expected to think, or urged to think - find the moments that forge together like magnets for you, follow them, and see where they take you.
