Here, I’ll be posting some of my stories and posts from giveagirlapen.com and also some of the beginnings of my other stories/novels I have in the works.
Let me know what you think, if you get a chance.
Again, if you’ve reached this from the blue tab at the top, go down to the green column and you’ll find more posts there. This is just the ‘parent’ page.
xx
-e*
p.s. these were all written in about 20-30 minutes are are extremely rough. not much editing was done, if any at all…. jsyk!
want email updates?
Amy!
Hmm, where do I go from here? I moved into a new house. I stay with a man, 65 years old. He is one hundred seventy ounds overweight and has diabetes. It was a move setup for me to do a number of things like clean and be good company. I will explain more as I go along. I wasn’t really informed about the conditions of the house itself…
Aside from going to Life Bridge to meet with Minister Frank Guzzo “Gustafson”, I’ve been going back and forth to Work One at Ivy Tech. Who needs public transportation when you have you’re own two feet? It has been a long time, a long road traveled slowly down alleyways where I used to take pictures at night back when this whole walking thing started; something I did just to get away from the disputes from my sister when she was still single after her painful divorce over 5 years ago. My folks followed suit. Mom prepared to sell the house.
I alone slept in the backseat of my car which as you know was paternally disposed over two years ago. I remember that night, the times that followed. How awkward it was then, sleeping with my winter clothes on, a quilt over my head covering my feet so no one passing by would see me. I was self-conscious about it but more afraid of what was happening to me. It was hard to believe what the family was going through. It felt evil.
While he worked down on all fours scrubbing every inch of the kitchen floor, at the house in Hebron where he spent much of his childhood years, to avoid worse pains ever present in his mind, I remained unaware of tomorrow. How unnatural this amount of rage. The confusion people feel during times of uncertainty acts a motivator factor to get ahead safely. Though, with more problems the divide between a balanced life and failure seems as thin as old fishing line.
The next morning I awoke, tried to start the car, but there was nothing. I was out of gas. Though luckily I was only a few blocks from my friends grandfathers house. He was a man I looked up to; an old friend, mentor in a way. At that time he was about 68. He had always been a jazz musician; on the road in his twenties. He spent four years in the army during WWII. Then he went back to playing jazz, the drums , piano and singing with various bands around the states. He would tell me stories of hanging out walking down the streets of New York with Charlie Parker- drunk as could be, how he played in front of Duke Ellington, once, who sat in the front row. And two weeks before Billy Holliday died, he went to visit her in the hospital. He had so many pictures of life in jazz; a life created and turned into his own history from life expereince.
He was living in Chicago in 1999 where he had a stroke. After he recovered, he moved to Valpo to be closer to his daughter, Edwina and her family, the Shields. He was married to a woman named Joyce. The were together over forty years prior before they separated, never seeing each other again until forty years later. Somehow, somewhere their paths crossed again. They locked onto one another. And for the next eight years before Edward Chappell “Papa Ed” McDonald passed away they never left each others side. It was at that time in October of 1999 that I played Stormy Monday on my acoustic guitar for him while he cut his nephews hair. After I finished singing the lyrics, he said “keep playing” and turned it into “Papa was a grinding wheel.”
One hour before his passing he had his grandson Hassan call the house where I stayed in Hebron to tell me what was about to happen. The doctors gave him two days to live. Hassan was to pick me up the next morning to see him one last time. He just couldn’t hold on that long.
So when I awoke that morning, I prayed he was home and he was, in the kitchen cooking chicken soup, with wings and legs. I borrowed five dollars and a gas can to walk to the nearest Marathon station. I walked back to the house after getting gas. We talked awhile about my dad and mom, and where I was in life. I had to go but he said “Just come back to church. we’re there for you. Come back and play guitar. That’ll help you.” I gave thanks and went on my way to reach my father.
This depression has lasted for years. Though, now I have to be in control and I am. I think I’m just nervous, anxious, sometimes frustrated, but there is no more real disappointment. I used to drink to deal with this sort of pain and be social. Yet, so many social people never think that type of social interaction, especially younger has anything to do with our own personal responsibility without knowledge of problems as they relate to ourselves and to other people.
He do I become accountable? The hypocricy in the words love and relationships, from me to you as a writer, is characterized by behavior separate from our intentions, disproprtionate from our own desires when the line is blurred out of visionary forms of apathy pushed to cynicism. Never for the way we look while taking each painful moment and locking it away and categorizing it under solitary self destructive vices: amplified by excess and chemical combinations in places seen only in our thoughts. These places remembered while walking unconscious of underlying outcries in new places where happiness is known in presents states of liquified escape attempts to avoid recognition socially of any emotional distress.
The I N I, that I think more of now has a new age weight for my shoulders to carry. I am forever in the midst of expectations and true tests of character. Though this community knows my concern. I believe they understand where I need to be in order for me to live comfortably. I think we all want the same thing.
I don’t quite know what the cause was other than being recognized from a lot of years that went by. I like that about you; thinking of others as you wish. Most people wouldn’t have gone that far. As withdrawn as I may seem I wish for now that I had more control over that. I mention it this to you because you called, and you asked for it……………………………..
-Doyle