When I was growing up my father had one goal that was his motivation for year, to get out of the city. During his constant efforts to reach his goal, I sat back and watched as well as experienced many events along the way; many that I believe shape who I am. I would like to focus on my experiences I had living in the city, experiences my father tried to prevent, but I do not regret what I saw or what happened to me. In fact I am grateful, as I see my sister grow up in the county; happy I did not grow up in the environment my father tried so hard to reach.
Throughout his entire life my father had one goal in mind, to get out of the city. Now this phase is commonly used, and means nothing to the people that live out of the Baltimore lines, but to the people that live inside the boarders, this is a common dream among many. For example, in reality Baltimore is just one big piece of land that holds over 636,000 people, but for the people inside the lines the term Baltimore City and Baltimore County mean a lot. When traveling down the pot hole filled roads of Baltimore, there is a particular spot that you will pass when it is just understood that you have left the city. Now, this spot is not marked, it is an invisible line that is seen by the people who live there.
My father tried more than half his life to cross that line and he did, when I was twelve years old, but this story isn’t about going off into the sunlight once we crossed that line. It isn’t even about what happened to me after I crossed that line. My story is about the events that lead up to, the November when I walked into a world completely different from my own, seeing and meeting people that would never truly understand me.
I would like to do some research on drugs for may paper and how prevalent they were in the 1990s. In addition , I would like to see what the most popular drug was in the 1990s. From what I looked at so far from times magazine, cocaine and heroin seemed to be the dominate player.
At this moment for my story I feel like Kaysen’s would be the best mentor. I would like to go through many events that are important to me and my life. Although I cannot so them all I would like to force on a few. With Kaysen’s structure I feel I will be able to do this the best because she was able to say a lot with only using up a few pages.
I know I want to talk about at least two events in my story. My main questions are how to go about explain the events, as they are very complex. In addition, for me this is a very emotion matter and I would like this to come out in my writing. As I said in my blog about The Glass Castle I want people to understand me not feel sorry for me. This is a very important matter for me and I would like to work on how to do this in my own story.
it also looks like a key to your focus is place, location, baltimore–in that sense, someone like momaday is an important guide. was baltimore also an ‘enchanted’ place? i see potential also to develop some dramatic conflict/tension: your view vs. your father’s perspective.