As I was writing Fishing for Light, I could not make up my mind as to Eddie Wilcox’s age. And then, I stumbled upon the 23 Enigma. The reason? I happened to be reading about William S. Burroughs. At present, I reside in St. Louis, Missouri, and he happened to be from St. Louis, so I was curious about his life. He was a lead part of the Beat Generation, and wrote, Naked Lunch. It is a wild ride for the reader, and the cross connections with the number 23, and Eddie representing the Millennial Generation, I thought it was a perfect fit. I like to be specific, if you read Fishing for Light’s first sentence you will read what I mean.
“On December 22, 1990 inside a university hospital complex, Edward Tiberius Wilcox was born at exactly 3:07 Coordinated Universal Time.” Fishing for Light.
We are born at an exact moment, and we die at an exact moment. I intend to use up every Nano second of my existence. But further into my odd brain, I used to live in Florida, and enjoyed walking about the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. I highly recommend the museum. In particular, take a close look at Salvador Dali’s master work, The Ecumenical Council. If you take a moment and read about the paintings meaning, I think you’ll get a sense as to why I wrote, Fishing for Light.
http://thedali.org/exhibits/highlights/the_ecumenical_council.php
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Chapter 2
Twenty-three years later just beyond Nashville’s outer-loop, inside a spartan one-bedroom apartment, Eddie flicked on his father’s old Mr. Coffee machine. Stark-naked fluorescent tubular ceiling lights blurred his vision as the gurgling coffee maker began to gasp steam and drip addictive brew. After a random godless lightning bolt stung a nearby laurel oak, he ducked down below the white-on-white Formica counter top. He heard a crack and then a dead thump. Eddie crawled over to his kitchen window; he stared down two stories at the soulless tree with a black charred limb stump thrust toward heaven. He shook his head. He knew his natural reaction was no match for the one universal constant: the speed of light. He studied up at the guilty dark-grey thunderclouds and wondered if special providence hid up there and had decided to zap him. He would already be flying into a white haze, as an oven roasted, Ralph Waldo Doll toward his long since deceased father, Adam.
But his cell phone vibrated. The tracking device sounded like a trapped bumblebee within the irregular shaped ceramic bowl, a bowl his mother Sophia had made years before at her church pottery class. It had been a Father’s Day gift for Adam. It had rested at the left corner of his father’s glass covered office desk, full of multi-colored candy next to the formal family photo. Until the day they had to pack up all of Adam’s possessions after his fatal heart attack.
NS
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