Monday, April 19, 2010

A novel Introduction...

My voice is silent… screaming silent. You can see it…if you look around you can really see it… there is a table full of well dressed people… wine glasses are half full, there is a lady who is delicately tracing a figure eight on the white linen table cloth with her knife and nodding yes to the gentleman sitting beside her. As she lifts her head, bringing her eyes to his, she begins to  smile. Others are laughing at a joke the big guy at the end of the table has just told and he adjusts his waistband trying to shimmy his stomach back into his pants. He feels that he has control of this group. Meanwhile I am trying to enlighten my end of the table with my story and it’s as if nothing is coming out. In a movie, the voices would fade and you’d only hear my deep breathing. I lower my head, close my eyes for slightly longer than a necessary, take a deep breath and slowly roll my head back up. I give the woman seated next to me my “That’s nice” smile and turn to my left, panning the room. I’ve got to get out of here; the screaming inside my head is winning.


As I push the door open, I am flooded by parking lot lights covering me and I think maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t where I was supposed to tell my story or as Grandpa Gene would say, “Spin this yarn.” These people are ones I considered “acquaintances” rather than friends… some stories are saved for friends. Perhaps that’s one of the gifts we give them… a story of “us”, a story that tells who we are and from where we come. But then again, maybe we don’t tell them everything… for the same reasons. There are a few stories we all carry inside of ourselves that no one hears. Some stories are like some truths… better left unsaid. For some reason the story rolling in my brain had to come out and it seemed more like a train, it wasn’t going to stop until it ran me over.

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