BOOK EXCERPTS

A  LIFE LIVED ANONYMOUSLY

 

Hi, guys.  Maybe you don’t know me, or maybe you forgot me, or maybe I just didn’t protect my social connections as well as I might have.  Sorry about that.  I’m trying to write a book at the moment.  My ultimate goal with this book is to win the now non-existant Queensland Premiers Literary Award.  Sounds crazy, I know.  But how hard could it be if I’m the only entrant.  My prize?  Maybe I’ll just give myself a pat on the back, say, “Well done, son.  You deserve a chocolate.” 

 

So, what’s your name?  My name is Grant.  Up until this point of my life I have lived a life of quiet anonymity, I guess.  But, in the service of reconnecting with my fellow members of the human race, I’m willing to give back a little bit of that.  In return, I ask only for a small place at the table and a small piece of the pie that is community.

 

My immediate goal, or one of them, is to write a book called Linked In.  In my book I want to share some of my experiences and opinions with the reader who is still out there.  I hope we will always have readers, even if Google doesn’t.  Because a reader is simply a person with a good book in their hands and a thirst and hunger to turn one page more.  That’s not even right.   It doesn’t have to be a good book, just any book.  It doesn’t even have to be a book.  It could be a comic, or a newspaper, or a magazine.  Heck, it could be your grandmother’s recipe.  Anyway, that’s the goal.  But if I’m going to do all of this writing, I’d just like someone out there to participate in the shared bond, that strange symbiosis between writers and readers everywhere.  Can someone, please, pretty please, down on my knees, please, just read my bloody book?

 

I began this book after a somewhat torturous, troubled seven year relationship with the world of work.  I am so grateful for all of the good people I was blessed to work with, all of the Simons, Neils, Livs, Toms, Nicks, Elis, Analins and Stephanie Bs, and the contributions you have made to my life.  Thanks Eric, Thanks Dave, Thanks Mike.  I’ll also thank the children I taught, perhaps most of all.  Teaching kids was fun, man.  I’ll also thank the teachers from Japan who worked alongside me, like Kou, Otsuka sensei, and Tominaga sensei and many more.  I’ll even thank some of the bosses like my boy Bobby- I still like you, man- and Mr Narita, my vice principal of the millennium.  I won’t thank all of them though.  Why should I.  Some of you guys were real pricks, you know that? You really know how to keep a person down, how to kick hopes away.  So thanks, guys, you’re really great.  Erase that last sentence.  Why?   Just because, I don’t see the truth in it.  It feels like a lie. What I will give you though, is the gift of anonymity.  I will give you that, that form of immunity.  But you know who you are and you know what you did.  Mate, no-one wants to know your name, anyway.  Maybe some people do, but not the way I’m going to talk about you.  If you’re back from Hawaii, Toshiyehyou… or Atachi san… is that alright with you, if I just change your names a little bit.   

 

              So, anyway, after being retrenched with all of my fellow co-workers, I thought, no.  I might do my own thing for awhile.  Just for a change, I might do what I want to do.  So, that was the idea.  The concept was this- to create a kind of viral buzz around one sad, lonely, happy, joyful, dancing, anguished, laughing, crying crazy guy who chose to walk free of his cage of social isolation and to rejoin the human race.  It’s called, The Open Book.  It’ll be my best seller, yet.

 

My book is about how I used my gifts of love and understanding to reconnect with others and to make a life.  A simple life.  One I can be proud of.  For my wife, for my little man, Serachan and for myself.  People have called me crazy all my life, but wasn’t that the case with many visionaries.  So, rather than keep begging and pleading for someone else to help me, I won’t do that this time.  This time I want to rein in a little bit of power for myself over my own life.  I want to give back a feeling of hope to the little things of this world, even just the feeling of feeling small.  You could be the tallest man in the world and still feel like you have nothing inside at all.  Or you could be the smallest and feel like Goliath.  But, here’s the thing.  There’s too much pain already on this planet, and that will never go away.  I want to teach the world I live in the lessons I have learnt from others about how there is always, a spot of goodness, much more than that, there is essential wholeness in the human race and life itself.  Of course, I am prone to over exaggeration at times, but aren’t we all a bit like that.  My way of seeing the world is, I think, a little unique.  I have tried to build an interlinked conceptual system of how to put others needs before one’s own. Now, I want to act upon those visions.  If I can do this, someone like me, maybe we all can.  I hope to teach people how to see the person in front of us as a mirror in reverse.  And these are my reflections.

 

I am also hoping to raise some money for charity.  My life is now half over, so it feels like it’s time to give back to the world a little bit more.  My aspiration is to create .charity within myself.  I want to start a charity, to just put my hand up and say, why can’t I try too?  Just to walk around with my head held high, on my shoulders, and say, “I did that”..  “That thing was great.”  Of course, any man, especially one who needs a wife to dress himself, is going to need a little bit of help.  Is there anyone out there, can you hear me, I’m going to need your help.  Don’t just wish me well.  What do I need, editors for a start.  But I believe I have a very powerful narrative voice.  Why is that?  Because I had to look so hard to find my voice, I had to doubt the doubters, the biggest one of which was me.  And I have a narrative that is unique. 

 

(I’m looking for other people to help this process along. G  Just an idea, I had on occasions..

 

Concept*  I am using my own experiences to show people how a crazy guy like me can get a little back, a little back of my good stuff inside,  I can teach this world a thing or two about SMART recovery for itself.  Signing off, G) 

 

So who do I see myself as?  To answer that question I try to look at art.  To look at writers of songs, and movies and books and think what would they say about me?  What would Aimee Mann, or Paul Thomas Anderson or Kurt Vonnegut Jr say about a man like me.  I think they would think I’m a bit WEEEIRD but I’m kind of funny, sweet, and unique.  I am not afraid of sadness.  Many people are.  I know that. 

 

Happiness makes me happy, but so does raw emotion.  I treasure tears.  I would cry into a cup and see them as my gift of mercy to this world.  This world would say merci right back.

 

So where to start.  Maaa.  I could start anywhere, but let’s start with two days ago.  I have been going through some weird stuff lately.  I feel like I am auditioning myself for a job as a dog trainer.  This little world I live in knows one thing about me.  I love my dog.  So, I took the boy down to the local park, and let little children and their parents watch my dog’s many tricks.  He can find things.  He can choose things.  He can catch like crazy.  He can run like the wind.  He can play with anyone. Eat some chicken and come home.  Shit, my dog can almost juggle.  He can run triangles.  Not always.  But sometimes. 

　　So I came home and I put on Bachelor No 2, by Aimee Mann.  And I thought about the story of my life.  My favorite song is called Just Like Anyone.  I think’s very real, and beautiful.

“Maybe I wasn’t that good a friend but you were one of us and I will wonder just like anyone if there was something else I could have done.”

The song is about the lost things.  The anonymous people that were lost to this world because of their gift of feeling what other people don’t. And as I wrote my diary alone in my room,  I began to wonder, “Who else is out there on the other side of this wonderful world wide web who feels the same.  Who else is listening in?”