The weblogs of Beth, Christian, and the cat: updated daily, weekly, or occasionally.
Wednesday, 01 March 2006
Beth: An unfinished story.
I saw the words scrawled in a public bathroom in Haiku, a tiny town on the island of Maui. Many people had added their graffiti to the walls of the bathroom stalls, but this one stood out to me. A woman had drawn a large, somewhat lopsided heart with a black pen. Within the heart were these words:
I love
Zacharias
Gonzales
But he doesn't
deserve it
The words intrigued me for their uniqueness, as far as bathroom graffiti goes. This was no "Laura was here! 2005!" or "Brittany + Tim 4-ever!" The words stung of melancholy. They piqued my curiosity, and I've been wondering ever since. Who is this person, and why did she feel the need to write such a cryptic message on the stall of a bathroom? Who is Zacharias Gonzales, and why does she love him? And most importantly...why doesn't he deserve her love? If he doesn't deserve it - and she knows it enough to admit it publicly - why does she go on loving him?
This strikes me as the exact thing from which novels are born. 
I'll bet that Anne Tyler, had she seen the scribbles, a tiny piece of someone's life, would be able to conjure up a hundred various storylines taken from that one sentence. And no doubt they would all be supremely interesting and strikingly different. I've been idly thinking about the mystery woman for about a week now, but haven't really come up with any so-called "novel" ideas. That's probably why I'm a newspaper reporter instead of a book writer, but it doesn't stop me from speculating and imagining lives for the mysterious person.
Mystery Woman left an unfinished story of her life on a public bathroom stall. I'd love to hear someone else's theories on the story behind her words.
Oh, and if you want Hawaiian inspiration - she was in Hawaii, after all - you can check out a larger sampling of our Maui pictures here, in the "Maui, Hawai'i" folder. Enjoy!
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