The High-Water Mark On The Horizon in Ecco Domani

I have been hoping to get into blogging for some time now. I have kept journals off & on for some 20 years now. I began writing poetry, and short stories in my journals when I was 12 years old (2002). By the time I was 16, I had decided I wanted to be writer. Many circumstances lead to the decision: a love for reading, and the peaceful reprieve a book could give me from the chaos in my surrounding home life; long car rides, before smart phones, watching the landscape unfold, and change with Tolkien’s The Hobbit filling my imagination of the unknown, and Holden Caulfield tucked into my Snowboard Instructor Jacket; I would read riding the lifts up the mountain.

 Besides Dragon Ball Z the manga, My Side of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George would be the novel to convert me. Home life consisted of verbal, and physical fights, and upheaval. My siblings, and I were home schooled, and my older siblings were too much trouble for my mother to cope with: always a fight, always loud yelling, and feelings of insecurity. My older brother would take his own frustrations out on me. I was becoming overweight around age 10, and my brother made sure I was painfully aware that fact that I was "fat & ugly." So, the story of a boy running away to live by his wit in the Catskills Mountains created a psychological "safe & happy place." I would have preferred risking my life against the elements, and wild animals with a falcon named Frightful all alone living in a hollowed out tree over being incarcerated at home with constant psychological abuse, no safe place (even dogs get kennels), day after grueling day.

 I have always imagined myself writing my "Coming of Age" story like Richard Dreyfuss in Stephen King's *Stand By Me,* or Johnny Depp in Hunter S. Thompson's *Fear & Loathing* looking back over the '60s, and with the right kind of eyes you can see the high-water mark in the horizon. Maybe this is that moment.

Z.D.

Last updated March 21, 2022