i wrote about it before, and i talked about it, maybe it had passed into apocryphal land. when i was in 2nd grade i gave my young passion, my rock collection, to a tall freckled girl on the playground, and a screaming posse of girls threw it in the air. i still see it in celluloid slow motion, hovering like dead stars in the glaring daytime recess in the center of my mind, above the dirt. 
i think about that now, how i've been going all the time to pebble beach with mister, but aside from some sea dice and sea marbles, i rarely picked up stones, except to throw them back in the water for mister to chase. but now i met r. who followed the dropped rocks in this strange diary, and i'm again gathering stones, and other objects brought by the tide, for my collection, and to give to r., who loves them as i do, the way i wanted christie poston to, in my squelched passion in 2nd grade. 
maybe a lot of later life is secretly about the bringing together of the lost collection of a child we still want to know. maybe the time comes around by recollection of present things.