I am working on a big project for my creative non-fictional class. I decided to write about my girlfriend's house because there was a claim that it used to be a gas station/store in an old town that does not exist now.
It is curious how easily history can be forgotten. How the passing of time can just wash away whole and the peoples who lived long ago. It is even more curious how we back and see glimpses of what was once there but can never gasp the full meaning and understanding, no matter how hard we try.
It is interesting to analyze how the human race seems to exist outside of time, yet is ultimately doomed by it.
Anyone can become a detective to the great mysteries of the past. All you need is a subject. An small idea about something important to you. It must be an important matter, you must force yourself to stick with it, until the end. No matter where the end takes you.
Then you search for the "paper trail". Once you find the first "bread crumb" that piece of evidence that proves something was there, that a history was created, you must lose yourself a time not your own. Take what you know of the present and leave it there for a bit. Focus on what you can learn from the past. Image yourself as part of that lost world.
Once you emerge, recreate your findings so that the rest of the world can make sense of the past. History is all around. We just need to look closely at what is not there to find what was...
My biggest problem with this project is that I am limited on the opportunities of interviewing the expires on the subject of coal mining and a town called Rosemantown.
A good writer would go to the source life in these places and try and find what remains. Unfortunately, for me that all lies 2 and half hours away. And since gas is so expensive, I must settle for phone interviews and less on actually first hand experience...
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