“If we sacrifice the singular hero and the need for the same, there’s a chance (however fragile, however sincere, however hopeful, however simple) we’ll gain one another. That, too, is what I’m doing here.” -Monica Huerta, Magical Habits, p. xxi

                Today was an especially low tide, the bay pulling back a hundred yards or so from the beaches that I usually think of as its edge. My partner and I walked out. Seaweed. Crabs. Marine snails. Pelicans, seagulls, and four or five other kinds of birds I can’t name. The seaweeds painted many colors, some thin and almost algae-like, blossoming in scattered pools, some thicker and brighter and redder. And shells and fishbones. And somethings making bubbles up through the sand. And kids walking, a long way off. And us.
                I think one of the things I’m most particularly unlearning from my training in creative writing is the idea of main characters. Our talk about stories was full of that: whose your main character? I like this main character. The main character’s really carrying the action forward. Forward. That’s another one I’m wondering about, walking across the sand where tides sweep back and forth. But this post’s about main characters, or about not-main-characters, or about what we can be doing, here, on the wash of passing years. I don’t know of any or believe in any singular heroes. I’m letting go of that, and walking along with one another.