Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Freewrite

I liked where I was going with this, so I decided to publish my freewrite from class the other day.

Somewhere out there, floating around the nation, is a manuscript about me. From what I've been told, it's almost 200 pages long. I come in on page eleven.
Ben Brownlow and I met twelve years ago, in the school library, I was in fourth grade, he was in fifth, and we were both taking advantage of the scholastic book sale.
We weren't really friends until after I moved. So six years later, when I was a freshman in highschool, now living in southern Indiana, I went to visit our long time mutual friend (and pen pal since I had moved) Amy back in Chicago. Ben came to her hourse and we hit it of. This is apparently where his book starts, and where this story will take off.
Ben was suspended/expelled from school for passing out innappropriate flyers of President Bush Jr., resulting in him having alot of free time. Amy had told him about her and my correspondence, inspired, he began to write me.
I don't recall the content, but I remember laughing alot. Ben was ridiculous, and very funny. Cynical. And he would take things too far everytime. Funnier. He told me about the flyers, and everything that went along with it.
Two years later he and I were still writing. Amy and I were not. Now Ben had immersed himself in the beats. Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy were his heroes. The details that he provided me with were vague, but he had made me aware of the fact that his home situation wasn't very functional. He was taking classes at a local community college and traveling constantly on the weekends. He wasn't happy, which was apparent. Phonecalls which were once few and far between and lighthearted, had turned into frequent depressed and overwhelming conversations. I worried about him alot, and always took a great amount of time to reassure him of the promise his future held for him if he kept his chin up.
But then I started getting post cards from all over the country. He had fled from home. I received short notes from Colorado, Oregon, all over. I'm not going to try and explain the essence of his and my friendship. I was one of his few sources of support, and the details of his life were vague, and few and far between. I knew his state of mind though, it was chaotic, confused, lost, depressed and misguided. I remember one conversation where he told me that he had been train hopping one night ...
this is too rough. Sorry.

1 comments:

tdm said...

Keep going...at least in your journal.