.:Out of Chaos:.

The following is first pass, first draft first page of my book project 'the Geist Chronicles' ... and copyright 2009.

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 sugar and cinnamon filled 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 way 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?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. 2009

Labels: The Geist Chronicles