Author’s Duties

Author: George Geisinger

L. Vera’s Notes: Here’s a piece by a friend who I have a great admiration for. Below is a story about a man who has once been in a metal institution and how it feels to be out. It’s not a work of fiction because this story is about the author, who deals with his world with a scramble of words, which we read, thinking it to be a great story but in fact is completely true. This is not a work of fiction, this is a blog post from the mind of George Geisinger and is a good example of what we are looking for on “The Wall”.

Author’s Duties

The window blinds are pulled in my suite. Reaching the controls would be a difficult task for me. The stretch across the debris on the floor would be more trouble than it’s worth. The AC is just the right temperature for the way the weather is outside.

It’s gotten awfully dark out, all too soon for this early in the evening, for this time of year. It’s been threatening to rain around here all day.  Rain has been the talk of the house. I’ve gotten all the lights turned on in the room, earlier than one might think would be necessary.

I was out-of-doors earlier, sitting in our courtyard. The springtime weather was just heavenly, but I think that by this time, it’s finally doing a little bit of that raining outside that everyone’s been talking about. I think I’ll just sit here and surmise about it. I’ve got some work to do, and don’t really care all that much for what the weather’s doing. It’s just a conversation piece.

I’m secure enough right here in the big building. There’s nothing like the little showers of springtime, to brighten things up out-of-doors a bit. I live in a home for seniors, and my trip to go look out the door, would be quite the Odyssey, from my point of view. I might encounter the ancient siren’s or Medusa’s along the way, like the fabled Odysseus did.

The grass might be a little greener tomorrow, and the flowers might be a little more perky a little later on. One might wonder whether I ever actually go to the beach, living just a few miles away from a very popular one, but the answer just happens to be, no, I don’t bother. I happen to have an artificial hip now, and for me to be doing any amount of walking is a challenge for me. I really don’t feel any compulsion to try walking on sand, either. I’m just old enough now that I don’t dare fall again. A fall could be disastrous to my hip replacement.

I’ve been trying to focus on writing some more fiction, after having finished one story, but I’m having considerable difficulty fleshing out the second work for a full five thousand words. I don’t want anyone to feel cheated by the brevity of my work. I’ll be back to scraping the barrel trying to get some more substance for that story, whenever I’m done here. But it’s early, and I have some latitude.

There’s nothing to much going on in Assisted Living. We’ve had our supper, however filling it was or was not. There’s very little to complain about around here, from my point of view, but I refuse to join the ranks of those who perpetually complain about the food. It’s such a useless complaint.

All the new chefs are sent packing, almost by the end of day one, and we cannot seem to get anyone with sufficient credentials to manage our kitchen for us, because everyone who lives here is way too picky. Everyone is so impressed with how much money we pay to live here. The residents all want a five star chef to take care of us, but they don’t consider all the implications of such a situation.

A five star chef would demand a five star wage, and our very expensive residence would either have to become more expensive, or settle for a cook who knows what they’re doing. Our situation has reverted to the latter scenario, since we’ve dumped a host of chefs in the year or so that I’ve been here. I lived in a senior living facility up home, before I moved down to Dixieland, and all of our meals were superb, but there were those even there, who disagreed with me, too.

There is a semi-darkness outside, but there is no sound of any wind or rain out.

The day refuses to fold, though. It’s only a little after supper, and one gets to thinking about what more one can consume to feel a little more filled up, when one eats as sparingly as I do. No matter what I eat, I still gain weight. I can’t figure that out.

You might be interested to know that I fired my therapist today. I feel good about it, too. She had it coming. She was wasting my time, not listening to the issues I’ve gone there to talk about. Keeping me in the listener’s seat, while she marvels at such silly things as the origins of certain semantic expressions. She gave my writing a good little put me down the other day when I was there to see her, too.  I don’t have to pay money for that. I can get that for free anywhere anyone feels like being unkind. Besides all that, she was condemning my work, sight unseen. I’ve known some pretty uncouth therapists in my time.  Some were great, but some, like this last one, turned out to be down right disappointing.

You can find more of George’s Stories on Amazon and his blog.

You can also find an interview I did with him about the book we are both in called Burning Bridges: A Renegade Fiction Anthology.

Advertisement

1 Comment

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI