Sharing Your Greatest Accomplishment and Bucket List: I'll Show You Mine and Hope You Show Me Yours

My post on Saturday was focused on my sister-in-law earning her Bachelor's Degree at the age of gettingprettyclosetoforty.  It got me thinking a lot about the concept of accomplishments ... and, strangely, of bucket lists (things you want to do before you die).

I asked that anyone reading the post share his or her greatest accomplishments and the top five bucket list items.

Only one person actually did this, and that was on Facebook.  I was kind of daunted for a moment until I went to do it myself and realized that it was a hard task I had set forward ... in fact, I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it myself.

Why?

Well, because there was the easy route on my greatest accomplishments ... and it would not have been a cop-out, because I truly believe that these three bright, beautiful ladies are my greatest accomplishment.

And the more I thought about it, the more discouraged I got since I didn't seem to have any tangible accomplishments other than my children.

I thought about focusing on how I survived being married to a man who changed into a violent and abusive alcoholic, but that doesn't seem like an accomplishment, per se.

Then I figured that surviving a rape (and the repercussions, which I sometimes think were worse than the rape itself) was kind of a big accomplishment.  However, I realized that I still have a lot of work left to do before I can say "I survived" because I am still reliving that event regularly, so that certainly makes it less of an accomplishment on my part and more sheer luck.

A common theme seemed to be developing, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my greatest accomplishment is surviving.  I don't really feel compelled to elaborate on that, and I definitely have to think more about it before I write, but I think that is probably my big accomplishment (other than my girls).

That really is kind of sad ...

I mean, I've written a book (not published yet, and I've accepted that it probably won't be), I've taught hundreds of students, I cook a mean meatloaf, I won some award for excellence my last semester at UNH, but none of those things feel like me ... which doesn't make much sense, does it?

So, yeah, I'm stating my ability to survive tragedies, travesties, and everyday life as my greatest (non-daughter) accomplishment.  And I'm not even sure how good I am at that ... Blaaaaaaaaah.

Onto the bucket list ...

Here are five things I'd like to do before I die:

1.  Write and have published a book about my experiences.  I'm still not sure if I should try to pass it off as fiction or if I should just state for the record that it's a memoir.

2.  Drive across the country, hitting every state along the way, by myself.  I think it would be an educational and esoteric experience, so I would want to be alone to soak it all up.

3. Meet Stephen King and explain to him (in a non-creepy way) the impact that his books, particularly the seven plus Dark Tower books, have had on my life.

4.  Complete a genealogy of all aspects of my family.  I think there might be some very interesting things there, and I'd be curious to see if patterns go back as far as I think they could.

5.    Swim with sharks.

So if you are more articulate than I am, please share your biggest accomplishment and your bucket list in the comments.  I'm very curious to see what everyone wants to do.

Looking forward to reading them!

Books That Changed Your Life

It's funny how sometimes different parts of your life come together to create perfect moments, especially valuable when you're trying to avoid writer's block (both on your blog and with your own writing).  

I'm a slapdash writer--a talented writer (as Stephen King once noted, "Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work")--but a lazy, disorganized, fits-and-spurts kind of writer, the kind of writer that will go weeks without writing a thing and then crank out thirty or forty amazing pages in twenty-four hours.

I'm working hard to develop better writing habits.  Really hard.   

And sometimes that leads to a perfect storm of keeping you from being at a complete loss for what to write about.

Writing for Zelda Lily has led to me staying on top of current events --> I created a Twitter account to follow news outlets (and interesting people with odd political ideas) --> I realized that one of my biggest problems as a writer is that I'm ... overly verbose --> I've added Tweeting every day to one of my writing goals since it forces me to be concise --> I found a cool piece on The Huffington Post via Twitter that gave me the idea for a blog post.

I've read a lot of books over the years, but the books that actually changed my life are in a category of their own.  I've put my top five down here, and I would encourage you to consider doing a post on this (it's actually a very telling and philosophical journey).

I've left a linky thing at the bottom of this post, so please link up if you go for this so I can check out the books that shaped and molded each of you.  Oh, and please feel free to leave comments ... I sort of thrive on comments (another motivation to keep on blogging, right ;-)?).

So, five books that have changed my life ...

1.  The Dark Tower (series of seven books) by Stephen King

Honestly, this series changed my outlook on the entire world.  It's what started my fascination with philosophy, with thinking about things on a higher level, of exploring the possibilities of parallel universes, of seeing how Shakespeare does not hold the patent on the concept of universal themes, of ....

Well, I'll stop rambling now.  

These books are not easy reads (they're very well-written and interesting and such, but you have to be willing to twist your brain in unusual and sometimes difficult ways to wrap your head around them); even Stephen King fans have struggled with these books.

All I have to say is, they blew my mind.  Totally blew my mind.

2.  The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

I first read this book when I was at my family's beach house one summer.  I'd read all the books I'd brought with me, and this was before we had cable television at the beach house, which contains an interesting collection of literature (basically, stuff that my mother and uncles read in high school, my grandfather's golf books, my grandmother's needlepoint books, and so on).  For some reason, The Thorn Birds had made it into this mishmash of books, and I figured one rainy summer day that I'd give it a shot.

It was the first time a book made me cry adult tears.  

As a fifth grader, I obviously had no concept of romantic love, but the story of a man and woman unable to be together, yet clearly destined for each other ... well, it planted a seed.

I think the book also made me appreciate my siblings more, to be completely honest.  There is a lot of death and loss related to the love between a girl and her brothers, and that pain was torturous to experience vicariously.  

For me to have taken on The Thorn Birds under the circumstances I did, it's evident that I wasn't getting along with Adam and Mary one rainy summer day when the beach was off limits and the card games had gotten boring (or I'd lost a lot and pouted away with my book).  Ironic that said book reminded me of how important they are to me ...  

3.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

This book taught me how to read.  Well, this book and my father.  Before he went to law school, my father was a teacher, and he got really into reading with me.  This book was one of my absolute favorites, and I can still remember as my father's fingers moved over each word until I understood them.

I can still recite this entire book, by the way, and the words contained therein probably played some sort of role in developing my hard-core visual memory.  The brain is an amazing thing ...

4.  Centennial by James Michener

When I was in Honors English 11, my teacher had us choose an author to do a yearlong study on.  We had to read one of the author's books each quarter, write analysis papers, and the final paper required us to identify a common theme that ran through each book.

I was kind of a laissez-faire student (I did well enough, at least in English class, but I neither tried very hard nor cared very much), so I gave the list to my mother and asked her to pick an author for me.  She recommended Michener, and I figured I'd go with it.  I should have known better when my teacher asked if I was absolutely sure about committing to Michener ...

Yeah, many of Michener's books, Centennial included, weigh almost as much as my seven-year-old does ...

I pulled my usual procrastination act and left both reading the book and writing the paper until the night before, but ... wow.  I got it done, did well on it, and then proceeded to eat up Michener's entire canon.

The idea of a certain geographical location serving as almost a character, the cultures that mix together as years go by, and the connections that exist between geography, characters, history, and pretty much everything ... 

James Michener taught me that vitally important lesson. 

5.  My completed novel (currently titled Unbreakable, but that's of course subject to change) by Katie Loud

I've written a lot about the history of this novel (which you can read about here ... it's actually kind of an interesting story as I went from a middle schooler to an adult with the same work in progress), and I think it's a pretty good read (you can read excerpts here and here, and check out a list of 25 unusual and/or interesting things about it here (this was actually a really cool exercise, by the way, and I'd recommend any writer to do this).

Bottom line, this book taught me two extremely valuable lessons that no other book could.

1.  All fiction is, to one degree or another, a form of author autobiography.  It's all in the details.

and 

2.  I can actually finish something that I've started ... even if it takes me over fifteen years ;-)

So, what five books changed your life?  Link up here :-)

Conclusion: Dark Tower Lyrical Analysis

If you are someone like me, you can find connections to such a vast epic as Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" anywhere. I've spent a couple of hours tonight finding some songs that might not be super-obvious, but that stood out to me as connecting beyond coincidence to King's masterpiece. Hope you enjoy, hope you leave comments (especially you, my good friend Roland), and hope it's made you think a little. In typical me fashion, this is the third installment. The other two are the posts directly before this. Hope this doesn't make things too confusing : )

"1979" by Smashing Pumpkins
Ah yes, except for Roland, human race is in this interesting cycle that it's impossible to get out of.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"And we don't know/
Just where our bones will rest to dust I guess/
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below"

"Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam
So is Roland of Gilead a hero? A villain? A flawed man? Salvation for all humanity?
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I don't know whether I'm the boxer or the bag."

"Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones
Oh, poor, poor Susan Delgado. (Although, to be fair, the gunslinger really did believe he loved her ... this song just makes me think of the poor doomed girl).
NOTABLE LYRICS
"Under my thumb/
Her eyes are just kept to herself/
Under my thumb, well I/
I can still look at someone else."

"Superman" by Five for Fighting
Poor, poor, poor Roland. He realizes this eventually, much to his own misfortune.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I'm only a man in a silly red sheet/
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street/
Only a man in a funny red sheet/
Looking for special things inside of me."

"Love Her Madly" by The Doors
Yes, Roland the Gunslinger did love madly (and deeply and truly and all that). Didn't do him much good though, poor guy...
NOTABLE LYRICS
"All your love is gone/
So sing a lonely song/
Of a deep blue dream/
Seven horses seem to be on the mark."

"Break on Through" by The Doors
More betrayal, of course. And the concept of breaking ....
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I found an island in your arms/
A country in your eyes/
Arms that chained us, eyes that lied/
Break on through to the other side."

"Losing my Religion" by REM
Poor Roland ... he doesn't understand the true portent of his slips ... and that they will adversely impact him personally more than his quest, if that makes any sense.
NOTABLE LYRICS
"Consider this/
The hint of the century/
Consider this/
The slip that brought me/
To my knees failed/
What if all these fantasies/
Come flailing around/
Now I've said too much."

"I Would Do Anything for Love" by Meat Loaf
Roland speaks of (and knows of) magic, sand is a constant in DT1 as the gunslinger struggles across the desert, and the allusions to the Emerald City in Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" are impossible to ignore.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"Will you make me some magic, with your own two hands?/
Can you build an emerald city with these grains of sand?/
Can you give me something I can take home?"

Further Lyric Musings about "The Dark Tower" (Part II of II)

"Babylon" by David Gray
This sort of captures the essence of the gunslinger's being, at least in terms of relationships with other people.
NOTABLE LYRICS
"Only wish that you were here/
You know I'm seeing it so clear/
I've been afraid/
To tell you how I really feel/
Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made"

"The Only Living Boy in New York" By Simon and Garfunkel
An interesting capturing of that city that brings forth so many, in all of its manifestations.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine/
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da/
Like it shines on me/
The only living boy in New York/
The only living boy in New York."

"Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin
The color red cannot be understated in this epic.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I gotta roll, can't stand still/
Got a flame in my heart, can't get my fill/
Eyes that shine burning red/
Dreams of you all through my head."

"Black Muddy River" by Grateful Dead
Roland, the gunslinger, knows more about solitude than perhaps anyone else ever.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"When it seems like the night will last forever/
And there's nothing left to do but count the years/
When the strings of my heart begin to sever/
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears/
I will walk alone, by the black muddy river/
And dream me a dream of my own/
I will walk alone, by the black muddy river/
And sing me a song of my own"

"Deep Inside of You" by Third Eye Blind
The gunslinger had long given up on having regular companionship. He did not expect, intend, or even appreciate at first his new Ka-tet.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"I've never felt alone/
'Til I met you/
I'm all right on my own/
'Til I met you/
And I'd know what to do if I just knew what's coming"

"Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis
This made me think of the Gunslinger's run-ins with mescaline. And, of course, his experiences with his own mind.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"Slip inside the eye of your mind/
Don't you know you might find/
A better place to play/
You said that you'd never been/
But all the things that you've seen/
Will slowly fade away."

"Eyes Like Twins" by Wilson Phillips
It seems as those this is a message the Gunslinger would have wanted to get to many. His fate, tragically, was a bit different ... and the execution of such a promise was clearly beyond him, despite his best intentions.
NOTABLE LYRICS:
"Where your last thought ends my next begins, always/
Just one heartbeat away/
From everything I mean to say/
Catch me I'm falling for you/
Wish for me I'll come running to save you/
Touch me I'm calling for you/
Remember me, I will never betray you/"

"Face to Face" by Siouxsie and the Banshees
King's world portrayed in DT focuses on different plains of existence, of parallel universes, of "twinners" or people that are basically the equivalent of someone else in another dimension of time. This song makes me think of that. Rather intensely, in fact.
NOTABLE LYRICS
"You never can win/
It’s the state I’m in/
This danger thrills and my conflict kills/
They say follow your heart/
Follow it through/
But how can you/
When you’re split in two?/
And you’ll never know/
You’ll never know"

Okay, another break. Hope this is making you think if you're a "Dark Tower" maniac, and hope it's not completely boring if you're not. I shall be adding more asap.

Philosophical Obession Dovetailing with Re-reading of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" Books

My newfound interest in philosophy (particularly in discovering my own brand of thought and whys and hows and all that stuff) made me realize that this rereading (following in the footsteps of my best friend because he's a free thinker in a way I'm not) of The Gunslinger, the first book in Stephen King's epic masterpiece The Dark Tower, is going to be somehow different. I was going to write a post devoted to each of the seven DT books, but I didn't get past the four page introduction before I realized this would not be possible.

Ah, the author's introduction. Who even reads them, anyway? Well, if they're written by Stephen King, I can assure you that I do. I'd even argue that some of King's best works are introductions to other pieces. He just gets this voice ... it's like he's talking directly to you, and it seems like everyone, no matter who you are, can relate. Uncanny, really.

King reworked the first DT book, The Gunslinger, because there were things that came up as the epic progressed that he felt needed to be addressed. One of the strongest themes/symbols/whatever you want to call it is the recurrence throughout the saga of the number nineteen. I did a quick search on the historical context of the number nineteen and found that it is
* The atomic number for Potassium
* A prevalent number in the Koran
* The number of months in the Bahai calendar (a group focused on uniting all religions in the world)
* A prime number
* A 1985 anti-war song by one-hit wonder Paul Hardcastle
* The number of years between the major events and the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
* The number of minutes given to a school shooting in Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes
* the name of the first Soviet nuclear ballistic submarine (K-19)
* the year (BC) that the Roman poet Virgil died
* The year (BC) that Herod the King began rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem (Herod played a role in both the birth and death of Jesus Christ ... the death place of Christ was also known as Golgotha, a name familiar to DT aficionados)
* the year (1855--1+8+5+5=19) that Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", the poem King used as a jumping off point, was published
* the year (well, 1919) that Mussolini created the Fascist Party
* the year (1919) that the Red Cross was founded in France ("Little Sisters of Eluria", anyone?)
* the year (1919) Einstein's Theory of Relativity is confirmed
* the year (1919) Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (Women's Suffrage, in case you're interested)
* the year (1919) the Treaty of Versailles is signed, basically ending World War I
* the year (1919) J.D. Salinger, Jackie Robinson, and a crapload of other noteworthies were born
* the year (1919) L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, died (Baum's story plays a major role in DT-IV)
* the main part of every year in the twentieth century (1900s). According to Wikipedia (not the most reliable of sources, says the English teacher, but I found this interesting), "The century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovation. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage."

But back to King. In typical self-deprecatory fashion, he begins by talking about the impact of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings on his own potential epic, what he believed would be the magnum opus he was one day known for. Tolkien's creatures came to life for him, so to speak, when he heard about the number of hippies at Woodstock dressed up as hobbits, Frodo in particular of course, but even more those that took on the likeness of the wizard Gandalf. Known as Gandalf the Grey in the early part of Tolkien's work, Gandalf embodies one with great power, great wisdom, great knowledge of when sacrifice is necessary. Gandalf sent these little barefooted creatures on a seemingly impossible quest, and he did so with a heavy heart. He was always on the edge of what Tolkien called "The Fellowship of the Ring" but which King would undoubtedly call "The Ka-Tet of the Ring" because the prospect of getting close to the others, of being part of a betryal as he so easily could have been, was too overwhelming.

The hippies got Gandalf, man. They totally got him. And Stephen King was a hippie.

The greatest message I got from this introduction, though, was King's constant reference to "Patrol Boy", something sent out by the world to "slow your progress." According to King, it's a good thing that nineteen is a time of arrogance and a feeling that you're bigger than life. You need to dream big; after all, "if you start out small, the mean Patrol Boy" will leave you with pretty much nothing--he'll essentially eat you alive. King's advice? "Let it rip, regardless of what anybody tells you."

The Patrol Boy came for King in various ways--through drug and alcohol addiction and, even more dire, a life-threatening accident involving an automobile. King gave the Patrol Boy the proverbial bird when he wrote his accident in to his DT epic, making the questions of who or what or why in terms of power completely wide open. The accident gave King the jump start he needed to finish the series, started when he was a boy of nineteen. His part in saving the tower was to finish Roland's story, to use his art as a means of removing "the threat to the Beams that hold the Tower up."

It's easy to dismiss The Dark Tower as the work of an immensely popular author who, it has been accused, could publish his laundry list and make it a bestseller. The thing is, though, whatever level (pun definitely intended) you read it on, these books will change your mindset. They will open up a whole new world to you, or at least make you view the one you inhabit differently.

I wish that I was nineteen again. On a personal level, I met someone when I was nineteen that I believe was my "Patrol Boy" (to use King's terminology). He shaped who I am, in many ways, and he opened up the door for me to look at things in a different way. My eyes were opened (and blinded for many years), my heart was opened (and shattered), but I see things so much more clearly now.

Of course, now I wish I possessed the courage to think big, to live what is in my heart and dreams, but I exist in a society with social norms and a hundred different roadblocks ("Patrol Boys" in their own right, I suppose) to my own deepest desire.

Still, being there with King--no, with Roland and his comrades, his ka-tet--has made it bearable. I can live vicariously through them in a world (well, worlds) where anything can happen. And, as King put it with regard to writing DT, "As for me, I had the time of my life."