TheBanyanTree: How to ReInvent Your Life in Twelve Weeks of Summer: a work of fiction

[Roger Pye]

And THAT was only Week One fer christ's sake!!!


I always wanted to be a writer. I mean that. From the time I was at 
grammar school in England and discovered I liked languages (french and 
english, how the words roll off the tongue) I wanted to be a writer. And 
I tried, people, did I ever try, I forget how many hours I sat in front 
of a typewriter with an empty blank sheet in it waiting for inspiration 
to strike, waiting for those first magical throwaway words of magic 
which would turn into a best seller. You should try sitting on a rock on 
a sandy beach in the fiery Aden sun (Yemen now) with a portable 
typewriter on another rock searching for magic strong enough to strike 
the keys all by itself because there sure wasn't any in my fingers.

Then one day a miracle did happen though I didn't realise it at the time 
- in fact didn't for over a decade. It was long after the Middle East 
episode and I was visiting England for the first time since emigrating 
to Australia when my eldest sister handed me a pile of papers and said 
"Here's stuff about our family history, why don't you have a shot at 
collating it all, see what you come up with."

Back home I skimmed through it, decided there wasn't really enough there 
to make anything interesting out of it, shoved it in a drawer and forgot 
all about it. Fast forward fifteen years to a time when I was caretaking 
a beef farm in the southern tablelands - 'caretaking' being a euphemism 
for being stony broke and homeless but fortunate enough to have a friend 
whose partner leased the property. Most of the time I had nothing to do 
so I pulled the papers out of their box, dusted them off and began the 
collation. It was more interesting than I'd thought and gradually I 
began to put all the data into some sort of order. Then as luck would 
have it - or the traumas of various sorts I had been going through for 
some years - I experienced an expansion of consciousness. My family who 
lived quite a distance away called it a nervous breakdown, but. I was 
right, of course.

The first note of the expansion was an emotional explosion in a theatre 
in Canberra. Maybe I should say 'the' theatre there being only one in 
1995 and the only people aware of my problem were the two people sitting 
on either side of me. The second note, notes really, were tears - they 
began in the theatre and continued without cease for 40 days - how 
biblical was THAT? And the third note also the one which caused, 
continued to cause and still causes the most problems, particularly 
about the years and years before it was sounded, was loss of memory. 
Total for about 24 hours, 90% for a few days - now it's around 5-10%.

10am the morning after the expansion (I won't tell you how I found my 
way home, it's another story) I found the family history I had finished 
but a few days before. The 'Pyes of the Emmetts 1599-1993'. It gave me a 
few clues as to who I was which was most acceptable but the preface or 
introduction was so banal as to be eminently boring. I thought surely to 
God I could do better than that, turned over to a new screenpage and 
began . . . .

to be continued

roger

TLW wrote:
> I am writing this fun Chick Lit novel, and have finally gotten far
> enough ahead that I feel I shall continue.  So I can begin to post
> parts of it here, for my favorite group of friends.  I hope some of it
> makes you smile.  (And Monique,missy,  I am looking at YOU.)  :-D
> 
> ______________
> 
> WEEK ONE
> 
> Okay, so here's the thing.  I've had what most people would call a
> really interesting life.  So far.  I grew up in Texas and had friends
> and a boyfriend and everything,  but one day I just threw my life
> there overboard and ended up in Los Angeles.  ("Ended up?" What am I,
> dead?)  I am a twin, which people seem to find fascinating.  I wrote a
> movie that you probably haven't seen but you probably HAVE heard of.
> It was Sean Young's big comeback vehicle.  "Who?" you say.  Never
> mind.  Let's just say the whole project didn't work out exactly as
> planned.  I ended up (There it is again.  Ended up.  Geez.  Geez and
> crackers.) right smack in the middle of the bottom of the list of top
> screenwriters in Hollywood.  Which -- you'll just have to trust me on
> this one -- totally sucks.
> 
> I have been envied my whole life.  That is, I like to think I've been
> envied my whole life.  Okay.  What I mean is, I have recently realized
> that I have consistently designed my whole life to be envied.  And
> somewhere along the way, I missed out on the whole Be Happy thinger.
> So dig this:  Beginning this week, I am going to take the summer off
> from being envied.  I am going to figure out what makes me happy, and
> I am not going to give a damn what other people think.
> 
> Just for the summer.  I can do that for one summer, right?  That's
> twelve weeks, okay?  Because I am so abosolootly DONE with thinking
> there must be something wrong with me because I cry at the least
> little thing -- I mean, a Lost Cat poster will set me off --  and
> everyone else thinks my life totally rocks.  Although actually  maybe
> it does totally rock.  Maybe I'll find out that I really do enjoy
> writing decent scripts for terrible Lifetime movies that do not get
> produced.  Maybe I'm happy to pretend the producers and executives who
> have to check with their assistants to remember my name before I enter
> their office are my BFFs.  And the agent who acted like she was my
> mother, for God's sake?  I'll pretend that she didn't get arrested for
> fraud after telling clients that they never got paid when she actually
> pocketed the fees, and then she auctioned off studio gifts to make
> money to buy a cheese shop in the valley.  She now writes a column for
> L.A. Magazine called "Say Cheese!"  There's a photo of her there,
> beaming and holding a meat cleaver up in her fist. I do not make this
> stuff up.  I don't have to, people.  She's right there.
> 
> I don't know exactly what else is important for you to know about me,
> so I'll just drop in some bullet points now:
>