More Than Half Way There

Summer Notebook. August 9th 2014. Short Journalistic Piece called, More Than Half Way There. Written by Andrew H. Kuharevicz.

This isn’t really a short story. I don’t have the time right now to edit and put everything in quotations. Time is not working on my side. I am living outside and only have one hour a day with the computer. It is what it is. It is life, and this is just a series of handwritten pages that I wrote in my notebook…

This is what happened. It’s not all that much. It isn’t war. It was just this…

I was writing in the library and an older man said something to me. He was in his mid-sixties and his name was Albert. I know because he asked my name, and I don’t know why, and so I asked him his name. I was doing something and didn’t want to talk but Albert told me he didn’t know how to use the copy machine, “can you talk to it” he said.

This man I didn’t know was trying to make copies of sheet music and he performs in the park with the free symphony. Albert said…you must have had a class or something? you sure are a fast typer. I said I’m a writer and I guess you could say that. He opened his folder and showed me more sheet music. Nice I said and he asked me if I played.

Play? Yeah Albert said. Music. You play an instrument? Sounds like you play based on your typing. I laughed and said, yeah, well, I write a form of I guess…folk songs I guess you could call them, at least I do when I have a guitar but…yeah so…real cool though… I have to get back to my…

And I was trying to get back to the screen but Albert said, that’s all my handwriting, right there, see, on the sheet music, and I bet when you were writing your words I was writing music. Very good I said, and…

Here take this Albert said. It was a sheet of his music. It looked like art. It looked like writing. It was so much cleaner than my scribbled notebooks. I looked in my bag and then I handed Albert one of my handmade books. What score I said. I mean composition or piece is this? Albert pointed and… “oh…Bach”.

And now that I write this back at my tent, as the sun goes down over the lake, I can’t remember what Bach composition it was. I was in a rush at the time, and I know exactly what I was doing. I was trying to find a job. The cover letter was to be attached to my resume for a war correspondent out in the middle east, and I didn’t think that I would get the job, even though I should get the job, and sure, I would go over there and risk my life and be on no side because I am everything, but I would go and watch how the end game scenario of the flesh of steal and gunpowder and these crazy minds who are out to shed each other’s blood plays out. And the end is slow but steady, and I would go and write in war, I really would, only because I am a man of words and only here to get you the story, because this is about everything that is all of us…

But this is all beside the point, but then again not really, and that is because everything that is everything is part of the reason that I was in a rush and can’t remember the name of the Bach composition that Albert is playing a piano solo for, and He’ll be there this weekend. For some reason this is interesting and I don’t know why I said, but the truth is that I’ll be here and you’ll be there, and Albert will be playing the keys down at the park, and he’ll do this for free. He used to play the flute in the university of Michigan symphony and he’s still doing it. This is great stuff I said to Albert. He’s almost seventy and he’s still a music man. I’m thirty three. I’m more than half way there Albert.