Thank you Stephen King
A bit unconventional I guess, but still.
3/27/16
I should probably dust before I start typing. I know it will get to me and then I’ll have an excuse to stop. Hah. Yeah, like I need an excuse.
I don’t want to … kind of don’t want to, but it has to be done. It’s just part of the whole thing the whole trip of this life and yeah I know that sounds crazy but hey man. I’m fucking crazy when it comes right down to it. I could be even crazier if I let myself, trust me. I may not look it, but I think deep down inside there’s a crazyperson just waiting to get out. And I bet it’s not as uncommon as you might want to believe.
The dust. The dust is everywhere, and I just dusted, I swear. You can’t get rid of it. Ghosts with bags of it flooshing it all over the place at night, when no one is up here.
Trying to find places for the things that I hold sacred, inside and out, what needs a physical manifestation and what needs a flowered altar in my memory and how do you determine the difference? How do you know you will not regret parting with the physical remembrance, regret the loss and yearn for one small touch of what once was. How do you discard these things and know you will never regain them - is this memory or that one more important, which one is ingrained in your mind like a river’s channel through sandstone? Which one will lose its appeal over the years, leaving you with a dim memento gathering dust but not favor among your past?
I would almost rather burn certain books than let them go. I know I will. I will burn my copy of The Shining from 1977 when the time comes that the pages crumble when you touch them, rendering it unreadable, in fact, really it is at this point unreadable. Should I think about parting ways with this memento now? At a summer campfire perhaps, under a full moon - or probably more appropriately a dark one - the pages lifting into the air in pieces, sparks, embers rising, darkening and then falling down, part of the earth and the memories of haunting, and the memories of that stolen pleasure, it was stolen, purloined from my uncle, at the behest of my cousin. She said I could, although I bet no one knows to this day where it went but me and she.
This book that has been with me through one house after another, through high school and college and cross country moves and back and forth again, through a marriage, a divorce and another one, through more than most high school seniors have ever been through, shit, even college grads. How can one paperback book go through so much and still survive? How has it managed to remain aged but relatively unscathed, still functional as far as its original intention, if only a little more fragile. A book. One, shiny (it was shiny once, there’s a little of it left on the cover, silver and black) little paperback book, that changed so very much in my life. A man who never knew me taught me to read, taught me to have a voice in my writing. A man who had no idea that someone like me, someone lost with no parents, really, no authority figures to guide her through the troubles of growing up, but that one man, through printed words, taught me to persevere, to SURVIVE whatever bizarre creature or spirit threatened me.
Those books, all of them, reaffirmed that yes I was right, and my screaming instincts would help me, and I would pull through it all, by BEING the heroine, by BEING the One Who Walks Away (relatively) Unscathed. I would Be Her. And no one could tell me any differently.
It didn’t matter than I wasn’t well dressed. It didn’t matter that I liked weird things, like Star Trek and Narnia. The innate knowledge of the herd had already singled me out as the outsider, and even though I was never a pariah, I was always Apart.
I learned that, through my apart-ness, I could be smarter and survive, and get through it, and even KILL the BAD GUY, if I was gutsy enough. I could do these things, not despite being Apart, but BECAUSE of it. My strength was in my isolation, in my self confidence and trusting my gut. I walked through the adversity and smiled. As I gained the confidence, I didn’t have nearly as much adversity, and what little there was, well, I survived, pretty much unmarked.
But without that idea - the idea that I could choose to be a victim or a survivor - I could choose my own path - that got more mileage than I think that far away man ever intended. That man will never know the full power his words have had, nor, maybe, does he want to know.
So, thank you Stephen King. I just wanted to say thank you before well, ya know, as they say, everything’s eventual.
3/27/16
I should probably dust before I start typing. I know it will get to me and then I’ll have an excuse to stop. Hah. Yeah, like I need an excuse.
I don’t want to … kind of don’t want to, but it has to be done. It’s just part of the whole thing the whole trip of this life and yeah I know that sounds crazy but hey man. I’m fucking crazy when it comes right down to it. I could be even crazier if I let myself, trust me. I may not look it, but I think deep down inside there’s a crazyperson just waiting to get out. And I bet it’s not as uncommon as you might want to believe.
The dust. The dust is everywhere, and I just dusted, I swear. You can’t get rid of it. Ghosts with bags of it flooshing it all over the place at night, when no one is up here.
Trying to find places for the things that I hold sacred, inside and out, what needs a physical manifestation and what needs a flowered altar in my memory and how do you determine the difference? How do you know you will not regret parting with the physical remembrance, regret the loss and yearn for one small touch of what once was. How do you discard these things and know you will never regain them - is this memory or that one more important, which one is ingrained in your mind like a river’s channel through sandstone? Which one will lose its appeal over the years, leaving you with a dim memento gathering dust but not favor among your past?
I would almost rather burn certain books than let them go. I know I will. I will burn my copy of The Shining from 1977 when the time comes that the pages crumble when you touch them, rendering it unreadable, in fact, really it is at this point unreadable. Should I think about parting ways with this memento now? At a summer campfire perhaps, under a full moon - or probably more appropriately a dark one - the pages lifting into the air in pieces, sparks, embers rising, darkening and then falling down, part of the earth and the memories of haunting, and the memories of that stolen pleasure, it was stolen, purloined from my uncle, at the behest of my cousin. She said I could, although I bet no one knows to this day where it went but me and she.
This book that has been with me through one house after another, through high school and college and cross country moves and back and forth again, through a marriage, a divorce and another one, through more than most high school seniors have ever been through, shit, even college grads. How can one paperback book go through so much and still survive? How has it managed to remain aged but relatively unscathed, still functional as far as its original intention, if only a little more fragile. A book. One, shiny (it was shiny once, there’s a little of it left on the cover, silver and black) little paperback book, that changed so very much in my life. A man who never knew me taught me to read, taught me to have a voice in my writing. A man who had no idea that someone like me, someone lost with no parents, really, no authority figures to guide her through the troubles of growing up, but that one man, through printed words, taught me to persevere, to SURVIVE whatever bizarre creature or spirit threatened me.
Those books, all of them, reaffirmed that yes I was right, and my screaming instincts would help me, and I would pull through it all, by BEING the heroine, by BEING the One Who Walks Away (relatively) Unscathed. I would Be Her. And no one could tell me any differently.
It didn’t matter than I wasn’t well dressed. It didn’t matter that I liked weird things, like Star Trek and Narnia. The innate knowledge of the herd had already singled me out as the outsider, and even though I was never a pariah, I was always Apart.
I learned that, through my apart-ness, I could be smarter and survive, and get through it, and even KILL the BAD GUY, if I was gutsy enough. I could do these things, not despite being Apart, but BECAUSE of it. My strength was in my isolation, in my self confidence and trusting my gut. I walked through the adversity and smiled. As I gained the confidence, I didn’t have nearly as much adversity, and what little there was, well, I survived, pretty much unmarked.
But without that idea - the idea that I could choose to be a victim or a survivor - I could choose my own path - that got more mileage than I think that far away man ever intended. That man will never know the full power his words have had, nor, maybe, does he want to know.
So, thank you Stephen King. I just wanted to say thank you before well, ya know, as they say, everything’s eventual.