The Greatest Distance Is Only a Thought Away (Or, A Morning on the Beach)

I have always loved the sea.  From the first time I experienced an ocean beach, I felt drawn to it, its vastness, the steady rhythm of the waves, the sounds and smells and textures.  Growing up in Rochester, New York, hundreds of miles from the Atlantic coast, I didn’t have the chance to visit the sea very often (though Lake Ontario is a pretty fair facsimile!).  And so, whenever my family would take a trip to the coast, I always looked forward to it, counted down the days.  The trips never disappointed.

 

But there was one trip, one particular experience, that stands out, apart from the rest.

It was midsummer 1994, and my family and I took a two-week expedition to Prince Edward Island, Canada–to this day, the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  We toured the Island, took in the sights, the rich red dirt roads and farms and quaint seaside villages.  But most of all, we went to the beaches.  PEI is famous for its beaches.  We stayed at a hotel right by the shore.

 

One morning, at dawn, I woke up.  I don’t know why.  I just felt an urge to get up early and experience the day.  Everyone else was still asleep.  I quietly let myself out of the hotel and walked down the narrow footpath, through grasses still moist with dew.  Off to the left, a raven, an early riser himself, pecked at something in the grass, ignoring me.  I continued on to the beach, empty at this hour, as the sun began its ascent in the east.

 

I walked along the beach, my feet making patterns in the sand, down to the water’s edge.  A gull flew overhead, calling out, perhaps demanding a scrap of food I didn’t have.  The water was warm as it flowed over my feet and around my ankles–just another of PEI’s many charms.  Despite its northern location, the ocean water surrounding the Island is the warmest anywhere along the Atlantic coast north of Virginia.

 

The waves were gentle that morning, the breeze blowing in softly off the water.  I looked out, as far as I could see.  The sky was some nameless variant of pink, the sun rising, slowly, steadily, the start of a new day.  Another gull–or perhaps it was the same one–squawked again, its call echoing, echoing.

 

I peered at the horizon.  It was hard to tell where the sea ended, and the sky began.  It all appeared to be joined somehow.  Not separate, but whole.  Not two, but one.  That’s when it happened . . .

I suddenly felt something, I wasn’t sure what.  It was a jolt, like a surge of electricity, but it was also airy, gentle, a feather swaying, nearly weightless.  I closed my eyes, opened them, and I saw.

 

I saw, in my mind’s eye–so clearly it was as if I were seeing it directly before me–a distant beach across the water.  It was hours later there.  People were milling about.  And some of them were looking to the west, looking toward me.  Maybe they, too, were feeling something above and beyond themselves.

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In The Eye-Dancers, Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, Ryan Swinton, and Marc Kuslanski travel through the void, whisked to a parallel world through an unexplainable psychic connection with the “ghost girl” who haunts their dreams.  While Marc, ever the rational scientist at heart, attempts to explain their remarkable situation through the principles of logic and quantum mechanics, Mitchell–inquisitive by nature, intuitive, with an imagination constantly in overdrive–believes there is much more to it than the laws of physics can explain.

 

And yet, he, too, wants a reason, something to grab hold of, something that might begin to explain why this happened, how this happened, and how Monica Tisdale, the “ghost girl,” was able to draw them into her universe.

 

At novel’s end, when she once again walks in the shadows and secret places of his dreams, Mitchell asks her, point-blank  . . .

“Why did you ever come to me in the first place?  We . . . I . . . don’t even live in your world.”

To which Monica Tisdale answers, “I never really picked you.  I didn’t say to myself, ‘I need to get Mitchell Brant to help me.’  I just called, and you were there.”

But Mitchell needs more than that.  It’s not good enough, doesn’t go far enough . . .

“‘But the distance,’ he said.  He couldn’t even fathom it.  The void.  The gulf.  ‘You and me, we’re so far apart.'”

“‘Are we, Mitchell?’ she said.  ‘Are we really?'”

Later, upon reflection, in his own words, Mitchell states . . .

“Maybe more than anything, I learned that everything’s connected. . . . I’m not sure how I can explain it to make sense.  It’s like, even the things that seem so far away you can’t even imagine . . . even those things are right there with you.  And the people, too.

“Maybe we’re all connected to each other, in ways we can’t even really understand.  And that’s okay, I guess.  Because maybe we don’t need to understand it.

“We just need to believe it.”

 

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Standing on that beach along the sandy shores of Canada’s garden province, the sunlight warming the morning air, I felt a part of the whole, as if a million invisible fibers extended from me, in all directions, everywhere, across the expanse of the globe.  I thought of the fish beneath the water, miles offshore, swimming, pursuing, surviving.  I thought of giant squid and crustaceans and blue whales, slicing through the water like living, breathing ocean liners, and blind, glowing creatures with fangs and stings, as yet undiscovered by humankind.

 

Looking across the surface of the waves, their rhythm timeless, eternal, I thought about the continents on the other side.  What were people doing at this moment?  And I realized–everything.  Babies were being born in London, Moscow, Johannesburg, and Rome.  Somewhere in Berlin, there was a car crash; elsewhere, there was an unexpected visitor popping in unannounced, perhaps a long-lost son returning home and bringing smiles to his parents’ faces.  In Ankara, in Casablanca, in Madrid and Paris and Warsaw and every town and village and hamlet in between, life was happening.  People laughed and cried, some shared and felt good; others were alone, in run-down apartments or dark alleyways, thinking of surrendered choices and opportunities now irretrievably lost.

 

Here I was, standing by myself on a fine Island morning, the sea and the wind and the gulls my only company, and yet–I was everywhere, plugged in, one small cog in an infinite and incomprehensible machine.

The gull squawked again, as if acknowledging my thoughts, and then another gull swooped in low, and then another, and another.

 

I watched as, moments later, they flew out over the water, becoming smaller and smaller, until they vanished, like a sea mirage.

 

It was then that I heard voices.  Other early risers were coming now, the beckoning of an Island summer day too much to resist.

The spell broken, I turned around and headed back for the hotel.

As I walked, I thought of sandy beaches halfway around the world, fish that swim in the dark, and stars that shine, like diamonds, in the night sky.  I realized, the light from some of those stars, distant beyond imagining, takes millions of years to reach our planet.

Yet reach us it does.

 

Thanks so much reading!

–Mike

A Milestone, a Book Tour, a Thank-You, and a Prince of an Island

On the day I sat down in front of my PC to begin page one, chapter one, of The Eye-Dancers, little did I know where the journey would take me.

 

I had a general idea where I wanted the story to go, and I had a need to tell it.  It felt like a cyclone was bottled up inside of me.  Years earlier, I had dreamed of the wraith-like little girl with the blue, swirling, hypnotic eyes.  And she scared me–just as she scares Mitchell Brant in the opening scene of The Eye-Dancers.  But I wasn’t able to write her story.  Not at that time, anyway.

Then, nearly two decades later, I dreamed of the “ghost girl” again.  She was as real, as vivid, as she had been during that restless night years earlier.  She stood there, in the road, beneath the light of the streetlamp, half there and half not there–the light filtering through her.  And this time, upon waking, I had it!  Somehow, some way, after so many years, the story came to me, unasked for, like a surprise gift from a capricious muse.

 

I felt energized, high on creativity.  I had been wanting to write a novel about growing up, facing the challenges of adolescence, of peer pressure and fitting in and learning to accept yourself for who you really are and what you have to offer the world.  Little did I know the two would intersect.  The “ghost girl” would lead the way, and Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, Ryan Swinton, and Marc Kuslanski would follow.

As I began the story, the journey, I wrestled with the same questions and doubts every writer struggles with:  Is the idea any good?  Will I write a hundred pages and then get stuck?  Will anyone want to read it?  Will it be a failure?  And so, when, two years later, I typed the words “The End” on the last page, I felt a wonderful sense of relief.  It was done.  (Well, not really.  There was still the editing and the revising and rewriting, which would take months to complete.)  There is always a sense of loss when you complete such a long and personal writing journey.  But there is also a sense of accomplishment, and, for one brief, glorious moment, there is almost a belief that you can soar, riding the currents of the wind like some space traveler in a Ray Bradbury story.

 

When that moment passed, however, I realized the journey was far from over.  Yes, the story had been written.  But the adventure . . . the adventure . . . that had only just begun.

Shortly thereafter, I created this blog, not knowing what to expect, not knowing who, if anyone, would want to read about ghost girls and inter-dimensional voids and dreams and Twilight Zone episodes and old movies and comic books and ideas about writing and creating.  In the beginning, I was clueless.  I didn’t know a thing about blogging, or how to go about it.  But as I soon learned, the WordPress community is a wonderful and welcoming place.  My nervousness quickly departed.  I was like a stage performer, on his opening night, heart racing, breath coming in short, choppy gasps, worried about messing up–but then discovering that the audience is patient and kind, generous with their support, and eager to lend a helping hand.

 

And now, all these months later, I have arrived at a milestone.  This post today marks the 100th post on The Eye-Dancers blog.  And I can’t thank you all enough.  Your ongoing support, encouragement, and interest in these ramblings of mine are the reasons I am still here.  You make blogging a joy.  I enjoy every minute of it, and hope you all know how much I appreciate you and thank you for the ways in which you’ve made me a member of this great blogging community.

 

I also wanted to announce a new development for The Eye-Dancers, the novel.  Beginning yesterday, and carrying on straight through November 21, The Eye-Dancers is being featured in a book tour.  It’s sponsored by Fire and Ice Book Tours, and I hope you’ll take a look at the schedule and perhaps follow the tour as it makes its rounds through the month of November  . . .

http://fireandicebooktours.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/book-tour-the-eye-dancers-by-michael-s-fedison-ya-teen-sci-fifantasy-tour-dates-11713-112113/

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When I was in the eighth grade, my English teacher surprised the class one gray, nondescript February morning.  She announced that, for the next several days, we would watch a movie in class.  Students cheered.  A movie?  We were all in!  When she said it was Anne of Green Gables, a recently released adaptation of the famous novel written by L.M. Montgomery in 1908, I wasn’t sure what to think.  I had heard of the classic, but had never read it.

 

 

Throughout the week, I found myself riveted by the movie.  I smiled many times at Anne’s antics, and cried more than once, my tears hidden in the dim lighting of the room.  Some of the other boys in the class proclaimed they didn’t really like the movie.  “It’s for girls,” they groused.  I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them now.  They liked it.  And I . . . I loved it.  It inspired me to read the book, and then other books by L.M. Montgomery.  And I couldn’t help but notice that many of her stories took place on her native Prince Edward Island, in the Canadian Maritimes.  As time went on, I got the itch to visit Canada’s “Garden of the Gulf.”

 

In 1994, my family and I went.  We drove from Rochester, New York, to PEI–a two-day, 1,000-mile trip.  We stayed a week.  To this day, I maintain PEI is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  Sometimes, when I’m out in the yard or sitting at my desk or taking a walk, I close my eyes and imagine myself strolling along one of the Island’s red dirt roads, flanked by the wild lupine that bloom seemingly everywhere, a magic carpet of color.

 

Or I picture myself on one of the Island’s many beaches.  Or on a particular beach, at a particular moment . . .

It was early one morning, midway through our vacation.  Our hotel was close to the sea, and, not being able to sleep, I decided to walk down to the beach.  The previous day, the temperature had soared to record-breaking heights, but now, in the silence of an Island morning, the sun rising over the water, the sand between my toes, a lone seagull calling out, its cry echoing along the beach and the dunes, it was cool, almost chilly.

I looked out over the waves, shielding my eyes from the sun.  There was no one else around–just the gull and me, and a solitary crow pecking at something in the grass a few hundred feet behind me.  And then, even the gull flew away, leaving in its absence the gentle murmur of the sea.  I peered toward the horizon.  I couldn’t tell where the ocean ended and the sky began.  They seemed to merge, melding into one silent entity–timeless, eternal.

 

I listened. For what I didn’t know.  Maybe, in the quiet of the morning, the sea whispered its secrets to those willing to hear them.  But more than anything, I felt a sense of exhilaration.  There was so much out there, beyond the horizon, so much to do and see and discover.  I smiled, eager to travel along the back roads and highways and hidden woodland paths on this journey.

 

As I stood there that morning, two decades ago, I had not yet been online–the Internet was in its infancy.  The term “blog” hadn’t even been invented yet.  If I had known then what I know now, if I had known I would be fortunate enough to discover such a wonderful community on a place called WordPress, in the twenty-first century, I am sure my smile would have been even wider.

Thank you to everyone for all the  support of The Eye-Dancers’ first 100 posts!  I hope you’ll stick around for the next hundred . . .

 

Thanks so much for reading!  You are the best.

–Mike