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Citizen of Ville Joie

~ An orphan's story. Based on true events.

Citizen of Ville Joie

Monthly Archives: June 2012

Citizen of Ville Joie – A new beginning

29 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

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Books, Children, family, Inspiration, Life, story, Thoughts


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl describes his arrival at Ville Joie…

A recent picture of the orphanage “Ville Joie”

“So we drive for a while or at least long enough for darkness to settle outside and when we finally arrive at Ville-Joie, it’s not at all what I expected. The man in the suit told me we were going to a home. But this is a big building. He grabs my suitcase and takes me through the large and heavy doors in the front entrance where people are waiting to greet me. They all seem nice enough and they take turns introducing themselves while smiling at me. I’m not really used to it since the adults in my neighborhood never smile. Those in charge at Ville-Joie are known as “educators”. Luke, Linda, Carol, Denise, Giles, Andy, they all present their hand to shake mine which is something I have never done before. In the place I just left, if an adult extends a hand anywhere near a child, the rule is to duck to avoid the slap and run as fast as you can although, more often than not, it is more a threat of a slap than a slap itself, not as much because of a lack of will as it is a lack of interest. Somehow I have a feeling It doesn’t work like this here.

Since it is night already, there isn’t much time to talk and no time at all for a tour so this will have to wait until morning. Carol offers to walk me to the dormitory but asks me to try and keep as quiet as possible because the other kids are already asleep. She points to a bed at the very end of the large room, near the back wall and whispers that this one is just for me. We walk as quietly as possible, I sit down on my new bed and stare silently at wall in front of me. After pulling out my pajamas, Carol slides my suitcase under my bed and sits next to me. She looks at me for a short moment and then gently puts two fingers under my chin to motion my head in her direction and smiles at me as if to say that everything will be fine. Some smiles, as well intended as they are, have nothing reassuring about them. That’s how I am introduced to irony; one genuine smile for a thousand tears to come. I have yet to say a word since I sat in the car back home. Maybe I’ll talk tomorrow. I haven’t cried either since I’m still not sure what is really going on and where I come from, you better know why you’re crying because if you don’t, there’s always someone close by to threaten to give you a reason. I lay in bed facing the wall with my eyes wide opened until I can no longer stay awake and I fall asleep for exhaustion…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad…

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Citizen of Ville Joie – Misery knows no tears

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

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Books, Children, family, Inspiration, kids, Life, orphan, Thoughts


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl talks about the moment he was taken from his home…

“So when a big and obviously expensive white car turned on our backstreet and proceeded to drive in our direction, we all stopped what we were doing and marveled at this shining armor with nearly dislocated jaws. Once the car came to a stop near us, a man wearing a suit stepped out of it and smiled in our direction. I watched him go up the stairs and knock on the door of my family’s unit. The other parents yelled at their kids to come home for dinner, leaving me alone in the backstreet. A few moments later, I heard my mother call out my name followed by the sound of a door slamming. When I got up the stairs and reached the mystery man, he standing next to a suitcase. My suitcase it turned out. He picked it up and instructed me to go with him. I looked at him and then I looked at the closed door of our unit for a moment. The man gently put his hand on my shoulder, directed me down the stairs, opened the backseat door of the big white car and invited me to get in. I climbed in confused, wondering what was happening and where he was taking me.

Mostly though, I was wondering where everybody was. Where were my brothers, my sister? And why did my mother stay inside? The car slowly moved forward, and as we drove away, I quickly turned around and got on my knees to look out the rear window. Maybe they were there running behind the big white car to stop the driver and rescue me. The longer I looked the emptier the street appeared and when the car turned on the adjacent street, when I could no longer see our building, I lowered myself, sat down and looked straight ahead.

I’m so glad I looked. I’m glad because instead of wondering all my life if they were there, I have always known they weren’t. No goodbyes, no hugs, no drama. I guess when people have soaked long enough in misery as the people in my neighborhood had, a life altering moment like the one unfolding for me wasn’t really deserving of a tear.

I remained silent as the man in the suit tried to explain to me the best he could he was driving me to my new home. A home with other children just like me and where I would certainly be happy since it was called Ville Joie, which means “Happy Town”. He tried to appear excited about my new situation but he wasn’t fooling me; I realized right then and there I could spot a faked smile and a faked tone of voice when they were thrown at me. I knew something quite serious was happening. I had a feeling my life had taken a turn at the same time the car turned away from our street. Of course, I wasn’t sure what kind of a turn yet, so I guess I did what anybody else would have done in my situation; I remained silent. The man in the suit kept looking in the rearview mirror and asking me if I was feeling alright. Every time he asked, I just looked back at him in the mirror and nodded “yes” without saying a word.

I couldn’t have known it at the time but ironically, keeping silent in sticky situations would later become a very annoying habit of mine. A habit that would eventually get doors slammed in my face by women walking away from me on the other side. The first woman to ever do it to me was my mother when I was six years old”…

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad…

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Citizen of Ville Joie – The richness of poverty

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

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Blog, Books, Children, family, Life, orphan, Poor, writing


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl describes his origins…

“”This was Moonshadow by Cat Stevens who will sing for us as we take pauses from tonight’s story. I respect that you may not be a fan of his music, I am asking you to give me some time and you will understand exactly why I picked him and no other, why his voice, his words and the comfort born of his music are the perfect companions to the tale that follows.

So here is tonight’s story which can only be titled Citizen of Ville-Joie.

I guess the story begins when I was six years old. I was playing with the other kids from my neighborhood in the narrow street behind the place where I lived with my mother, sister and three brothers. We rented an apartment in a hovel in the part of town where the poorest of the poor lived. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened there and time went by so slow, it seemed like old people remained old people forever. No one around us ever owned anything of value so we never envied the others just like the others never envied us. One virtue of true poverty is its equity for those who live in it. In a sense, this fairness was a blessing for us children who called this street home because it meant we were oblivious to our reality. We didn’t have permission to go any further than the backstreet, except when our mothers sent us the convenience store just at the corner of it, and we didn’t owned a television so we didn’t know what the rest of the world looked like. It didn’t matter to us that all the tenants living in our building had their windows covered with newspapers because we had never seen curtains. To us, that’s how it was for everybody and when the pages turned to a dark yellow color, after bathing long enough in a mixture of humidity and nicotine, and it was time for a new window treatment, we would just go and buy a newspaper.

There were the dozens of clothes-lines going from each unit of our building to the one facing it on the other side of the street. So many of those lines and constantly bent by the weight of fresh laundry. I wish I could tell you that the clean clothes were a stark contrast with the landscape but an enormous beige and dripping wet bra hanging next to a formerly white t-shirt blended just fine with the rest of the tableau. To the easily amused eye of a child though, these lines looked like a never ending spider web. We would spend entire afternoons lying on our backs observing them and trying to figure out which line connected to which apartment. Laugh all you want, I said earlier we didn’t have a television.

Unemployed men sat on the balcony in a rocking chair and drank beer all day while their wives stayed inside, rolling enough cigarettes for their men to last until bedtime and getting the meals ready on time. That last part was easy, nobody ever ordered à la carte on my street. A can of beans or a can of stew, that was the menu du jour. In my family, it was peanut butter which apparently is good for either breakfast, lunch or dinner. So peanut butter it was for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner. Anyway, husbands and wives spent their entire days just a few feet apart and the only moments they interacted with one another was when they yelled at each other or at us kids. Yes, it was that kind of neighborhood.

So when a big and expensive white car turned on our backstreet and proceeded to drive in our direction…

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad

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When someone achieves…

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Excerpts from Citizen of Ville Joie

≈ 2 Comments


When a friend achieves something you aspire to do yourself, you can’t help but feel happy and share the good news!!!

Head on to my friend Nikki Owen’s Blog and find out what the good news is all about!

Way to go Nikki, all of us who follow you are rooting for you…

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Citizen of Ville Joie – The story begins

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

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Blog, Books, family, Friends, Love, radio, Relationships, story, writing


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl stuns others and himself as begins to tell his story live on his radio show…

“”And Susan, whatever happens, don’t cut me off the air”.

“What? Daryl! What the hell is wrong with you?”

At that same moment, the clock hits midnight and she has no other choice but to turn the microphone on because if she doesn’t, there will be dead air. In our business, silence screams incompetence. This would reflect badly on the both of us and she absolutely knows it. So almost immediately, the light goes green and my mic goes hot.

I begin to talk while slowly taking off my jacket. On my way here tonight I had no clue what the subject of my show would be. It’s strange how when the instincts take over, it all comes naturally. I guess it is the reward of experience and talent. Either you have it or you don’t. I have many flaws and the list of things I don’t know is longer than I care to admit, but I know this; I have it.

“It is midnight and a great new day to all of you. This is Daryl Hart with you until six o’clock with great music from the seventies and eighties.

If you are part of my regular listeners you have come to expect, in addition to the music, the presentation of and a reflection upon a true and inspiring life story. If you are not a regular listener, well, I guess you picked quite a night to join us. I tell these stories hoping they will give us a pause from the insanity of today’s life and remind us of what being simply simply human is supposed to be, even if only for a few hours. The stories of others in spoken words so their lives can help us find our way to the meaning of our own. Not for the drama of it, not for the envy of others and certainly not for pity for ourselves. It has always been about the reflexion and I assure you tonight will be no different, at least in that respect.

The stories I read to you are real, handpicked and carefully reviewed so I can present them to you in such a way that will fit into the vision I have always had for this show. “Mindful Radio” as my billboards read. My intentions were good but the process wasn’t all that honest. So tonight I find myself with the urge to confess that the way I went about selecting these stories was at best cynical. I spent countless hours researching books, magazines and articles all written by complete strangers, most of whom have been gone for years if not decades, when all along I knew of a story just like theirs and I selfishly chose to push it aside and ignore its cry out to be told. This story requires no research and no prep time as it is written inside of me.

Tonight, the music of Cat Stevens will be heard in the background of a story I never fully told, not even to those who matter the most in my life. A story written not by me, but for me by the people who long ago chose the words that would tell the early years of my life. A long chapter I felt was too complicated and yes, too difficult to share but which became very recently, too costly to hide.”

Just as I finish this last sentence, I’m startled by my phone vibrating. A message from Annie. “I’m listening”.

Knowing that she is there makes me feel a little better but I also fear her reaction to the way I chose to finally tell her what she has been so desperately wanting hear. I take a deep breath to finish my intro the best I can.

“When we return after this first song from Cat Stevens, the beginning of tonight’s story. My story”

Immediately after Moonshadow begins playing, Susan rushes to my studio, walks behind me and asks in a nervous voice “What are you doing?”

I’m so stunned myself by what I just did, I can’t even turn around to look at her. “I have to do this Susan. I’m going to need you to trust me on this and I’m going to need your help.”

After a pause she says “This is improv. Six hours of it. You remember how long six hours can be right?”

This time I turn around, look at her with half a smile and say “Believe me Susan when I tell you I have enough material to cover the whole show.”

Susan looks at me intensely for a few more seconds. “Ok”, she says. “We’ll give it a shot, but if you can’t go on you have to give me a heads up all right?”

While Susan marches back to her console, I pick up my phone and type this message to Annie. “This is the only way I know how to do it. Forgive me for the delivery and I beg you, just listen”.

Susan signals the song is almost done and a few moments later I switch my microphone back on.

“This was Moonshadow by Cat Stevens who will sing for us as we take pauses from tonight’s story. I respect that you may not be a fan of his music, I am asking you to give me some time and you will understand exactly why I picked him and no other, why his voice, his words and the comfort born of his music are the perfect companions to the tale that follows.

So here is our story which I guess can only be titled Citizen of Ville-Joie…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad

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Citizen of Ville Joie – The show really must go on

16 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

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Blog, Books, Entertainment, family, Love, radio, Show, writing


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Daryl must do his radio show after Annie leaves him…

“I spent the rest of this evening sitting in the dark while having a few drinks to take the edge off before my show. Whenever my mind turns to Annie, it’s always her eyes I see first. I have looked at them so often and I can see them in my mind so vividly, it’s as though the rest of her is about to draw itself around them and she will be here with me again. I think about her, about the reason for which I seem to have lost her for good. Her image fades in and out between childhood memories flashing in a sequence starring fear, tears and broken bones. Why would anyone ever want to hear this, especially a beautiful human being such as Annie? I’m still trying. I’m still trying to find the words and I just can’t do it. Is it because it all happened half a lifetime ago and the words are buried too deep. Am I too lazy to dig them up. Am I just being a coward. I’m not even sure anymore what it is that’s making me so dizzy; is it the booze or all these questions spinning in my head.

I’m taking the thirty minutes walk to the station hoping the fresh air will do me some good and help me clear my mind. About halfway there I get an uneasy feeling after I realize that I am not prepared for tonight’s show. I walk straight ahead with a busy mind but unable to focus on anything specific; my show, Annie, my past, nothing sticks long enough for a thought to take shape. Then, the phone Annie insisted on buying me early in our relationship rings, which is unusual at this hour, especially on a weeknight. I frantically reach in my pocket hoping it’s a call from Annie but, no. It’s Susan, my technician, producer and trusted friend of eight years asking where I am in a tone that betrays her anxiety. It’s unlike me to show up at the last minute as I have always placed a great deal of importance on preparation but tonight, understandably, I lost track of time and I sense Susan is on the verge of migrating from anxious to outright panicked. There’s a lot of timing involved in what we do and everything has to be choreographed precisely, especially for a six hour show which is a rare thing in radio nowadays.

I pick up the pace and get to the station with only a few moments to spare. Susan has readied my studio as usual and all I have to do is sit in front of the microphone which I do, still wearing my jacket and still holding my phone. Susan is standing next to me and talking but I can’t really hear her, although I did get something about going on the air in two minutes. For a second there, I have no idea what I’m going to say and the on air light is about to go green. After all these years of endless talking, all these intros, the countless stories and commentaries and for the first time of my career I find myself drawing a blank.

But only for a second.

This microphone has become an extension of my body and the reflexes acquired over time are mixing with the adrenaline and kicking in.

I touch my finger to my phone to bring up Annie’s number and send her a text message. This will get her attention, first because she sleeps with her phone on her bedside table and second, because she knows I absolutely despise text messages. After typing the message “Listen to my show, please”, I touch the send button and then turn to Susan to worry her with a request.

“Get all the Cat Stevens songs you can find”.

When we first started working together, Susan kept scheduling Cat Stevens songs for our show and every time I would ask her to replace them with different ones. At first, she argued that hosting a show featuring music from the seventies and refusing to play at least a few of Cat Stevens’ biggest hits didn’t make any sense. I just told her I wasn’t a fan of his music and I didn’t feel his songs matched our format, which was ludicrous because it was a perfect fit. She tried to slip one on me every once in a while, but I always managed to get them off of our play list. After a while she just dropped the subject all together. So now, I have managed to shock her with my request.

“Cat Stevens? What? Why? You’ve always said no Cat St…”

Susan stops talking abruptly as she sees the look on my face. I look up over he shoulder to see the seconds hand on the clock of the studio racing toward the number twelve. Susan turns on her feet and leaves the studio to run to her booth. Even though I’m looking at her through dirty and tinted glass, I can see her nervousness and confusion. With about five seconds to go, what I am about to say is definitely not going to calm her down.

“And Susan, whatever happens, don’t cut me off the air”.

“What? Daryl! What the hell is wrong with you?”

At that same moment, the clock hits midnight and she has no other choice but to turn the microphone on because if she doesn’t, there will be dead air. In our business, silence screams incompetence. This would reflect badly on the both of us and she absolutely knows it. So almost immediately, the light goes green and my mic goes hot.

As I take off my jacket, I begin talking. On my way here tonight I had no clue what I was going to talk about. It’s strange how when the instincts take over, it all comes naturally. Either you have it or you don’t. I don’t know much in life but I know this; I have it.

“It is midnight so a great new day to all of you…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad

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Citizen of Ville Joie – Shutting the door

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Blog, Books, family, Love, Relationships, story, Writer, writing


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Annie left a note for Daryl before she left…

“I went to the station Sunday and Monday nights at around eleven and did my midnight show as usual, but the stories I had picked to share with my listeners seemed more somber, darker even. They had good, inspirational endings as usual but I guess it’s all in the delivery which in radio is a direct reflexion of your mood and there’s basically no way to hide from it. By this morning, after my show, I was a complete mess and I have absolutely no clue how to shake it off, having sunk deep in that intense feeling of loss which I am no longer equipped to deal with. The part of me which used to rise and sooth this kind of pain has been asleep for what seems a lifetime now. It rose too often and too soon in my life, I put it to rest by shielding myself over the years to make sure I would never have to call on it again.

After we started seeing each other, Annie stopped coming to work early at the station so we wouldn’t raise suspicions and avoid office gossips. This also means I haven’t seen her at work these last two days nor did I call her, in part because I wanted to respect her need for space but mostly, because I was afraid of tempting fate. I feel terrible enough as it is without going ahead and making a phone call with the potential of making me feel worse.

Annie came to see me after dinner. When I opened the door and I saw her, I was so overwhelmed that I smiled and went forward to take her in my arms. I stopped short when she took a step back and abruptly ordered me to go back in so we could talk. I walked back inside of my loft and turned around. Annie walked in but I was disappointed when I realized she had stopped by the door and didn’t seem to want to get comfortable and stay a little while.

“You could come in and sit down, you know” I said looking down.

“I’m perfectly fine where I am for now.”

The brief silence that followed was still long enough for me to realize that this wasn’t going in the right direction. Annie confirmed it and went straight to the point.

“Do you have anything to tell me?” she said in a voice not nearly as soft as its usual self.

“I missed you very much”. My heart accelerated in anticipation of her answer.

She raised her eye brows and said “That’s nice. It’s nice to know.” The tone in her voice left no doubt that she meant it, yet it was still firm. “But that’s not what I need to hear from you right now”.

There would be no way out of this, she wanted to know. I kept thinking I should just let it out, all at once and see what happens. I took a deep breath, opened my mouth and moved my head forward as if I was going to say something. Nothing but dead air came out. I stood there with my mouth half opened, completely frozen, unable to speak. That must have made me look quite unappealing as Annie stared at me, waiting to hear something, anything. After a short while, when she realized I couldn’t bring myself to talk, she turned around slowly, opened the door, walked a few steps and closed the door slowly, still staring at me. In a matter of just a few minutes, I went from the joy of being in Annie’s presence again to the pain of standing alone, with no relief in sight.

The first time I cried over a woman, I was about seven and had fallen in love with a twenty-one year old university student named Andrée. The second time was when Danielle died. And this evening, as Annie turned her back on me and I heard her footsteps getting further away from me in the hallway, I didn’t fight the tears. Annie has earned them…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad

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The James Frey effect

12 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Excerpts from Citizen of Ville Joie

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I don’t know James Frey and before his adventures with Oprah I had never heard of him. I also admit; I have never read one word he has written. Yet, he has been on my mind ever since I began my writing project last September and the echo of his name has been bouncing in my head (there’s a lot of room to move in there) since I started typing my life away.

My project is written in two distinct folds. The adult (1st fold) who tells the story of his childhood (second fold). I know this genre has been used before but I’m writing it differently; I’m writing it on an iPad! The adult part of my story is completely made up. Fiction. Fabulation. Invented.

The childhood part of the story is true. Completely. Totally. Absolutely. It is my childhood.

Long before I began to write, I promised myself I would describe my memories faithfully, just as I see them in my mind, just as I remember the events. I’m proud to report that my conscience is clear and I have remained true to my promise. However, given the fact that the full story is one part biography and one part fiction, I have yet to figure out exactly how I will present my project once it is completed. I guess it will come to me in due time.

I realize people will ask me to prove some or even all of my story at one point and that is where James really did those of us writing about our lives a terrible disservice when he fabricated dramatic events in his biography. I guess I can produce X-rays for my broken bones. The scars are still very much visible on my face. There are some documents from Social Services but they are incomplete .(It was the mid-seventies so, no computers! And no comments about my age either ok? I’m not 43 years old. I’m 25…with 18 years of experience!)

So I worry about the apprehensions from the people in the publishing industry, should of course my project generate some interest, one day, maybe, perhaps. Do they shy away from that kind of writing to avoid a deep fry à la Frey? Do they still trust people who sometimes go through years of pain writing their story and subject themselves to countless rejections afterwards? Will Annie ever come back to Daryl…oops sorry, shameless plug here.

Are there people in the industry, authors who have been published or any of you readers who could shed some light here?

Tell me what you think…

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Citizen of Ville Joie – Annie’s note, reworked!

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blog, Books, family, Inspiration, Life, Love, writing


Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Annie left a note for Daryl before she left…

Every onece in a while…you feel the need to “tweak”…!

“I had a drink to help me clear my mind of what had just happened and went to join her in bed less than an hour later, hoping she had calmed down. I wrapped my arm around her and since she said nothing, I figured the fight was over. She must have waited for me to fall asleep to write the letter, put it on the pillow next to me and leave. Annie had told me a few times that, as a publicity writer, she didn’t feel her creativity was quite challenged enough. She is actually very good with words and her note was quite the reminder of that.

“Daryl,

We have been good together from the very moment we met. For a while, I believed we could be even better. I believed we could be great. I believed we were worth this much. I believed. Before tonight.

I have given you many chances to explain, at your pace and in your own words, the reason behind these silences of yours. The fight we had earlier made it clear that my desire to know what makes you unavailable to me when I want to be with you the most, is secondary to your need to hide it from me. Beyond your words and their meaning, it was the gesture of trust and the closeness I was hoping it would bring to us that I was looking forward to. This isn’t me trying to steal your secrets. The memories and experiences of your past will always be yours, wether you accept to recite them out loud in my presence or you choose to let this obvious pain you carry inside of you, darken some of the most precious moments we could have together.

When we are alone Daryl, I can actually feel the sun rising on us as a promise of that greatness I so wanted for us. But every time you retreat behind this wall you have built between me and your memories, the shadow it casts on my heart chills my affection for you. I have always believed that, in order to know where we are supposed to go in life, we must first know and understand where we come from. I can’t see our future if I can’t see your past and I refuse to live dishonestly by pretending “it” does not exist.

So open up to me. Trust me. I assure you, no matter what it is you end up revealing to me and regardless of how sad or terrifying you may fear your words would be, nothing could ever change what I see when I look at you; a strong, beautiful man who lives his life with an almost perfect integrity, the value I cherish above all.

I will want these tears back.

I will see you in a few days when I am calm again,

Annie”…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad

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Citizen Of Ville Joie – Annie’s note to Daryl

09 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by Steve Marchand in Second pass

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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Please read “About this project and the Author” for more information on my project. In this excerpt, Annie left a note for Daryl before she left…

“I had a drink to help me clear my mind of what had just happened and went to join her in bed less than an hour later, hoping she had calmed down. I wrapped my arm around her and since she said nothing, I figured the fight was over. She must have waited for me to fall asleep to write the letter, put it on the pillow next to me and leave. Annie had told me a few times that, as a publicity writer, she didn’t feel her creativity was quite challenged enough. She is actually very good with words and her note was quite the reminder of that.

“Daryl,

We have been good together from the very moment we met. For a while, I believed we could be even better. I believed we could be great. I believed we were worth this much. I believed. Before tonight.

I have given you many chances to explain, at your pace and in your own words, the reason behind these silences of yours. I need to know what makes you unavailable to me when I want to be with you the most. It seems the closer I want to get to you, the greater the distance you put between us. This isn’t me trying to steal your secrets. The memories and experiences of your past will always be yours, wether you accept to recite them out loud in my presence or you let this obvious pain that you feel darken some of the most precious moments we could have together.

When we are alone Daryl, I can actually feel the sun rising on us as a promise of that greatness I so wanted for us, but every time you retreat behind this wall you have built between me and your memories, the shadow it casts on my heart chills my affection for you. I have always believed that, in order to know where we are supposed to go in life, we must first know and understand where we come from. I can’t see our future if I can’t see your past and I refuse to live dishonestly by pretending “it” does not exist.

So open up to me. Trust me. I assure you, no matter what it is you reveal to me and regardless of how sad or terrifying you may feel your words would be, nothing could ever change what I see when I look at you; a strong, beautiful man who lives his life with an almost perfect integrity, the value I cherish above all.

I will want these tears back.

I will see you in a few days when I am calm again,

Annie”…”

Do not reproduce or copy the content of this post as it is the sole property of citizenofvillejoie.com
Contact: steve.marchand@rogers.com

This project is entirely written on an iPad

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Steve Marchand

Author of the writing project Citizen of Ville Joie www.citizenofvillejoie.com

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