the tree
First
draft of first page for first book…. The Giest Chronicles … Phae I was
sitting outside in the sun smoking a cigar visualizing ‘how would I
start my book, the first page’ … the first paragraph, first page has to
grab the reader and pull them in to want to find out more… This is what
I just wrote with very few edits…
The
heat from the now stub of a cigar was too much to continue to hold and I
still had no idea what would be my response to the question ‘what would
you do with your last twenty dollar bill?’ As I rolled left to attempt
to stand up from under the black elm tree I had been drawn to as an
inspiration spot, my ass felt like a clamp vise was squeezing it, my
right knee did not want to straighten out and my freakin foot was pins
and needles. I really need to find the time to keep in shape before my
age changes me from still thinking I look like a guy in his twenties to
the reality that my joints ache my belly hangs like a Southern bitch dog
who had too many puppies in too few years and I really am in my
forties. Is forty half way to the end?
This assignment of writing about the destitute jobless and down on
the luck spiral that more people where gravitated into these years was
harder than I expected. I used to kick these editorials out in a weekend
and then fill with some clever facts and the words flowed like someone
else was writing through me not I doing work. Did I lose my muse? Seems
to me the reason was that I… standing here with a stub of a cigar and a
blank note pad… was getting too close to knowing what it really would be
like to be at my last piece of cash. The paper had it’s good years and I
with it but times were changing whether I wanted to grow old or not,
whether the economy was shifting or not, whether I could still write or
not.
Breathing in a deep breath of
the crisp air I headed to find a coffee shop with a tall body warming
over sugared quad breve. This was still my favorite time of season with
the crunchy leaves and the hard earth. Why marketing people always pitch
the glory of summer and time off was beyond me. I needed the change of
season, the change of wardrobe to warm sweaters and the excuse to wear
my favorite shirt hidden under a cardigan. Anything looks good under a
cardigan. Besides they hide my gut that was getting bigger. How does it
happen so fast? Seems like yesterday I had climbed Mt Washington up and
back and still felt fine afterwards, now it was winding me to go up five
flights of stairs to my apartment?
Thinking about all these things, things other than my job, which was
getting alarmingly easier to do, think of things other than work.
Distracted like and old man lost in memories of things yet done and
almost certainly never to be attained I noticed with a scrunched face
that someone was walking behind me. At least I could see the shadow of
someone walking behind me, close behind and too my left. I heard no dry
leaves move other than those I moved and with resign the idea of losing
my youth my job and my hearing was like an undertow pulling me into a
silenced and frantic death.
Stopping,
the shadow stopped… Jheesh I spouted as I turned to confront whoever
was playing Silent Bob the hunter of men.
The closest person to me was some kid throwing a ball for her dog
across the common. The closest person. The silence of that thought took
me to the overburdened memory of Sheila closing the door behind her a
week ago. Leaving with her last box of books plants and a spatula.
Scratching my dry eyebrow the cigar ashes fell in my eye. GOD!…
scrunching my shoulders almost dropping my notebook eyes watering my
universe refocused to the moment of standing alone in the fading light
of day. Why had I stopped? Why was my focus so shot I could not even
carry on a conversation with myself anymore? Why… no HOW could that
shadow of a person be there next me and I be alone? …
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Copyright
2009, Justin Mead ~ (mail to: justin at rm-mi.net) In process the
book and details ... the idea came like a vision and the outline in an
instant was in memory. Now begins the work...
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