Garithin

Garithin is a small town that lays outside of the big city. It is a fictional town/suburb that may or may not have a real world equivilant. It exists in my mind. It could really be any small town that many of us grow up in around the country, and the idea is that anyone can relate to it. Like Katonah, New York, Middlebury, Vermont, Amherst, MA, Encinitas, CA, the burbs outside of Omaha, or any of the other millions like them in our country.
The idea is not so much to be spcific about the location, but to be specific about the people. Characters in a story are the ones who truly capture our attention and our heart. [When I am melancholy and deppressed I seem to do my best writing.]We want characters that are real and we can sympathyze with. By creating real characters a plot will evolve, and these are the two most important parts of a story. Building characters takes some time and filling in their history is essential to getting to the meat of the story. By meat, I mean the present situation of the characters and where they are going, not where they have been. That is why so many of my favorite novels, the beggining tends to be slow and slightly drawn out, because there is much exposition. Dealing with exposition creatively and assertively is what makes great writing.
So, in my story of Garithin, I introduce the characters that are important to the story. Steven, Molly, and the old Bicyle Factory owner. After introducing these characters and giving them a bit of a back ground, other sub-characters will come out.
Of course getting through the post mortum deppression and withdrawl from a loved one has to be dealt with.
Garithin has a population of about 100,000, which is rather irellavant to the story. The Bicycle factory is rather large, employing almost 2,500 people. The city needs a change, and needs to identify itself. Like most cities in our country there is nothing to differentiate it from other cities in the country. It is a cookie cuter culture, where different will get you killed. Yet, Old Graver has been different, in that he left a wealthy endeavor for one that would seem to many to be idealistic in nature. He lives the oil business, where he makes billions of dollars to persue a clean air project that supports a town, and makes a positive change to the masses. Would this really happen in real life? I guess in my heart I have always hoped so. I've often wished that some Rising star would branch away from the American Dream, and realize that "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness for all," means that we the powerful, we the rich, we the strong, have an obligation to help those less fortunate then us. On this road, unfortunately we will get burned, as Graver does. His wife dies. He looks for comfort in a younger woman, and when she takes him for all he is worth, he is virtually left penniless. His friends abandon him, then his dog dies, which really sucks cause that was the dog he and his wife found milling around Coney Island homeless. One minute he's on top, the next he is abandoned and left to die.
On this path of solitude and disaster, he gets in his car and drives from his home in Houston, Texas, all the way through the midwest towards Ohio. He is just driving, no real destination, and he's not even sure that he will live much longer. That's about the time that he reaches Garithin. He drives by an old motorcycle factory and see's a big sign, "Space For Rent. Convert Old Factory Into $$. Call 515-678-7890." So, he pulls off to the side of the road and dials the number. He waits for the ring. He starts asking himself what he will do with a factory. He has seen the world from the top. The money laundering, the squanering, those less fortunate then him get swept away. For thirty years, he never thought anything of it until it was all taken away. In the car, by himself, he had done a lot of thinking. His business partners had offered him zilch when his new wife left him, and almost blamed him for his inability to keep her. He had never experienced such rejection in his life, so he imagined that his friends must be right. He proceded to beat himself up and enter despair. He got in his Mercedes benz, and decided to drive. There was nothing left for him at his home, and they would just forclose on him while he was there. So, he moved on. Some might say he ran, and if you asked him he would agree with both. He released all his house employees and divided up there fund equally amongest them. He told them to take what they wanted from the house as well, and not leave anything behind for the bank. He would later claim that the house had been robbed and he knocked unconscious during the raid. He had been drinking a lot and not socializing much with his friends, so the story was legit. His driving staff also received bonuses from what was left of the salaries, and the cars that they drived except for his Benz, which he aqusitioned for himself. He signed all the Titles to the cars over to the drivers for $1 a piece. He had always been generous, or at least he thought so, to his servants. But now he realized how little they got payed. He had just payed them what everyone else in his neighborhood payed them. Didn't that seem fair? Now he realized as he talked to them before he left how little they made. $17,000 a year? Could some one live off of that? After he divied out the money, he realized that there was not much left for himself. He went to the local pawn shop, sold his gold watch, rings, and some silk suits. When all was totaled he had managed to get $22,000, which was a far cry from the 11,572,000 he had made the previous year. That didn't include all paid vacations, all paid car services, hotels, taxes, you name it. He was quickly learning what it meant to be a "Middle-Class" american.

Think about it...

Let me give you a little advice.
If you are young, don't rush to get into a relationship.

Here I am at work at 6am wondering what the hell I am doing.

I hate this job.

I spend my hole day sleeping and I get nothing done. I use to be so active. It is really annoying to because my roommate upstairs says I have no reason to be upset.
There is a lot going on in my life right now, but sometimes I wonder if it would be better if I could just be bymyself. Being in a show, work, the prospects of a new relationship.

Who am I kidding. I am deppressed. I am still not over Lauren, and still beating myself up about it. I went up to Amherst this weekend to visit with my friends and they listened to me talk trash all weekend. But that is all I did. Talk trash. I never showed them how sad I really was by her breaking up with me. You get into a realtionship, and for the first couple weeks it is nirvana. Then if you spend a lot of time with the person, familiarity sets in. Then you start integrating and changing your living patterens for that person. Next thing you know, you are leaving clothes there and she is leaving clothes with you.

Somehow during all that intensity, the coolness, the sweetness, the laughter gets lost and is replaced by tears and annoyance. You start looking around and saying, "Do I really want to be in this relationship?"

Sitting on the 22nd floor of my building waiting for the sun to set, I realized how deppressed I am. I started to think about my failed relationship and some how she seemed to be important to me, and I remembered all the good feelings. Those first few weeks. I almost started to cry, so I held that in to.

I am bummed, deppressed and lonely and I spend that time cramming it with activities so that I don't have to feel that way. I make calls to friends, and fill up my calendar so that I don't have to deal with it. But it is there. Then I moan, "Oh, how I wish I could make it better. How I wish I could change things. Oh I wish she would take me back."

I have only ever had one woman take me back. I've talked to friends who have had girlfriends take them back, and then they got married. I guess the right place the right time sort of thing comes into play.

Sleeping and eating have come back to me of sorts. I am not drinking as much as I work during the nights, and it is making me miserable even more. I should quit my job. I hate it hear. What else am I going to do? Where else can I work.

I feel terrible. The knitted hearts still sit in my bag. I guess I should just throw them out, but instead I ignore their presence. Maybe I should just spend more time at home bymyself being deppressed. I could play WOW again. But can't because it reminds me of her.

Why would you break up with someone if you didn't have something else lined up? I have been dumped before for an other guy. But just to break up with someone just to break up? Being single sucks. Being in a relationship is a lot of responsibility and I see how I failed that. Life is about learning. It really sucks letting someone down who you love. I am going to watch the sunrise now.

I got It!

Well, A little update for what is going on with me, and an interuption from the Novel.

I got in the show "Woodpecker" which will be held at ATA in November. More details to come. It would be great if you came to the show and showed your support.

Three

I sat up from a long knap at around four in the afternoon to the theme song of Jeoperdy and Alex Tribec giving his introductory speal. I lay on the bed for about twenty minutes staring at the cieling and listening to "Who was," "What Was," "Where was," and so on. Most of the questions I had no idea what the answers were and wondered how that information in some ones head could be of any use. Then again, these people were given the oppurtunity to win tens of thousands of dollars. I mentally kicked my self in the pants for not doing my homework for history class in high school. So much wasted talent. I got up at the second comercial break, sat at the end of the bed for a minute and went to the latrine to unload my blatter. When I came back final Jeoperdy started and I went out for a smoke.
I opened to the door to room 4e, stepped out on the balcony to the motel just in time to see a hippy chick get the door of 4c slammed in her face. Being a new resident ot the Motel, I'd only picked up the word this morning that 4c was never rented to anyone else other then one woman. This woman ran a "business" out of the room. Today was only my second day in the Motel, and most of the previous day I had spent cleaning out the insides of a Johhny Walker bottle. It was dirty, and I felt it my moral obligation to cleanse it of its smutty contents promptly, then dispose of the bottle itself. However, the bottle had not made it much best the side of the bed next to my Merril's.
Two days ago I quit my job, and decided that despite my over whelming debt, I'd get into some more and go on a trip. A very, very long trip. It landed me in Garithin on Tuesday and I was tired from driving three consecutive days in a row. Exhausted, bewildered and heart broken, I turned in to the only Motel I could find with a vacancy and was suprised at the pleasent accomodations at a moderate price. I kicked in the door to the room, after unlocking it of course, unscrewed the bottle to the Johnny, and proclaimed "Fuck Her!" The her being my now ex girl friend who had broken up with me two months prior and the subsequent break up, which I blamed for my life going into a tail spin.
Really what happened could not be farther from the truth. Danielle didn't really leave me anymore then I didn't leave her. We sat in our favorite coffee shop, and I told her that if I was so horrible to her, if I was such a horrible person that she should just break up with me.
So that is what she did, based on what would be best for both of us.
Of course, my ego could not see it this way and took it as a direct personal assault on all that I had and worked for the year and a half we had been together.
I mean, a year and half. Who breaks up after a year and a half. I mean, after you have invested that much time with someoen you mine as well give it a go, and see how long it can last. Well, at least that was my opinion on the situation but Danielle was not having it.
I watched the poor rejected hippy womans right activist sulk at the door for a moment, then shuffle down the balcony to the stairs and she descended. She walked out to the front of the parking lot which was defended by a grassy gutter more remeniscent of a castle moat then a gutter. She entered her Monti Carlo, started the husky V8 engine, backed up and drove away. She was a pretty white girl with a lot of hair on her head. She hadn't washed it in weeks, and this I could tell by the mass of dread locks that had formed. A man had entered the room of 4c after the girls debacle and I started to understand the "business" at hand a little more. I was always a slow learner and slow to catch on. Whenever someone made a jab at me, it took me a day and three hours to think of a come back. Of course, it was one that would have won the war only it came one day and three hours too late. I hated that.
I finished my smoke and tossed it to the pavement below. Bye, bye little red light. It bounced and sparked grandly for such a tiny flame and I turned and shut my own door.