Sitings of the Bizarre

I have no way of explaining some of the strange things that have happened since I began my Heaven's Wait journey. Has it been coincidence, or perhaps a form of telepathy?  I have a weird feeling that there is more right under the surface. Of course, I am leaking some "spoiler" tidbits about the story by revealing these incidents, but if you're game, read on.

The first oddity occurred the week after I completed the first, very emotional draft of R.J.'s Story. My family and I arrived on the Big Island of Hawaii for a vacation and coffee conference. I had visited that island before, but never the far north end. As we traveled north from the airport, we passed lush tropical vegetation, accented in the background by a vibrant rainbow. I told my family that the scene was right out of my story. A little farther on, a cluster of energy-producing windmills dotted the rolling foothills to the right of the highway. What's going on? I thought, recalling that R.J. had built some windmills in the hills when he got to Heaven's Wait. 

A few days later, we went on a water ride called Flumin' da Ditch at the top of the island. The ride meandered through a rainforest that boasted no less than wild coffee trees. This was the very jungle that played a significant role in R.J.'s Story. And to top it off, while we were at our hotel during those few days of vacation, the pilot episode of Lost aired on TV. Its bewildered characters found themselves in a tropical environment after their plane went down. My son said, "Hey, they're stealing your story." I had no explanation for any of it.

Not long after the Hawaii trip, my husband and I toured the Joseph Phelps winery in St. Helena, CA for the first time. When we looked down at the vineyard property from the hillside tasting room terrace, which appeared to sit on the east side of the property, my jaw dropped. The landscape, less the rows and rows of grapevines, was the raw layout of Vowella Valley, the primary setting for R.J.'s Story, complete with a road meandering down the middle and a small lake in the northeast corner. The only things missing were the surroundings: a single mountain to the west, a jungle to the north and a swamp to the south. I showed my husband where each of the story's "clans" lived, and pointed out the locations of other landmarks mentioned in the story. We joked that this property needed to be the story's movie set someday. Why was I seeing these actual sites after I had already invented them in my head?

Later in the process, when I was working on a revision of R.J.'s Story, I inserted a short-lived scene where R.J. inquired into the possibility that his old cat Sam might be in Heaven's Wait. My inspiration for Sam was a longhaired, one-eyed orange cat that lived a couple of doors down the street. He loved to hang out on our front porch. Once again, we went out of town for a few days. When we returned, I learned that the "real" Sam had been hit by a car and died. And I hesitate to mention this, but...there is also a reference to Michael Jackson in the story. What can I say? As a result, no one in my family wants to be included in my stories.

Lastly, R.J. learned during R.J.'s Story that his parents had moved to Berkeley from San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, never to return to The City again. A couple of years ago, while attending a memorial service for one of my uncles on my dad's side, my cousins and I found out from looking at my uncle's old photo albums that my grandparents had actually lived in Marin when they were first married, and had moved to the East Bay after the 1906 earthquake. I had never heard this story before, and neither had my cousins, who had been an active part of my grandparents' lives.

Needless to say, I've been pretty freaked out by it all, but at the same time, I'm more inspired to move forward and perhaps discover what it all means at the end.