adiva_calandia

 I have really enjoyed Doctor Sleep -- I like Dan Torrance a lot, and I like Abra Stone, although I think Sai King has a somewhat shaky grasp on the voice of 21st century teenage girls -- but I also have the hugest cognitive dissonance around the ode to AA. Like, it's clearly deeply personal to King and I really like that, in the same way I like a lot of King's obviously autobiographical stuff. The sections on writing in Misery come to mind.

But also AA as an organization is so freaking weird and religious and dubiously effective and treats illness like a lack of willpower that I'm like "???" There's a line near the end of the book where one of the AA members says "For every seven alcoholics who walk through our doors, six walk back out again and get drunk. The seventh is the miracle we all live for." I don't like them odds, man!

I have mentioned on Tumblr before that I find AA-style narratives really compelling in media, particularly TV -- e.g. Sherlock on Elementary, Reid on Criminal Minds, Leo on The West Wing -- because one, it has such a classic arc of descending to the underworld, overcoming battles, returning to the light, and two, because it offers an ongoing and interesting source of internal conflict for the character. (Today I have also been thinking about rape being used a plot device or backstory for female characters, because of Maureen Ryan's piece on that topic, so I'm also pondering how addiction functions in a similar way.) But does presenting that narrative over and over do harm to addicts who aren't helped by AA? Are there any good stories out there about alcoholics who get therapy or medication and recover that way?

I dunno. Anyway. I should probably move off King and back to Octavia Butler, but I like him so much! And I gotta reread The Wasteland before the movie comes out, obviously.

 My morning thus far:

"Hello, establishment! You have never met me and you are not advertising for employees and you should give me a job! Here is my resume. The phone number doesn't work. Bye!"

&gumption;?

Also I stopped and listened to a nice Greenpeace volunteer on the street because, having been a cold caller, I always feel bad for those people. And now I am settled onto the couch again for a bit to watch AMC's Stephen King marathon. (Oh my god Silver Bullet is so . . . well, mediocre, really.)

Hey, I aten't dead! We are currently in El Burgo Ranero, just past the midpoint of the Camino in Sahagun. Apparently one theory for the name of this town is that the burghers here sold frogs (ranas), which just makes me think uncomfortably of Hellboy and Lovecraft.

No fewer than three people misled me about where to find this albuergue when I got here!!! Malakas.

We have been on the Camino for two weeks as of today! Also mi hermana has joined us! Also I'm getting pretty good at twirling my walking stick like a baton!

Man, I'm hungry.

Also I am rereading The Gunslinger, because after three or four days on the Meseta -- the flat, hot, often shadeless and rest-area-with-water-less part of the Camino -- I have had the line "The man in black fled into the desert and the gunslinger followed" stuck in my head. (Helped, admittedly, by Joan Osborne's cover of "Man In the Long Black Coat" coming up on my music the other day.)

And while walking, I'm gritting my teeth on the annoying voices of the readers and listening tovLibriVox's Le Morte D'Arthur, which I was supposed to read, uh, three years ago in class and . . . didn't . . . . And goddamn was Uther Pendragon a DICK.

That appears to be all the news that's fit to print at the moment. Not dead!

More media consumption!

( 'Salem's Lot )

( Border Princes )

It also makes me really want to try and write a novel-length fanfic -- just spit it out, a la NaNoWriMo. I mean, I would kind of love to write for TV, or write tie-in novels like this, and the trick to it seems to be, as with all writing, to turn off the editor and go. King says something about that in the introduction of 'Salem's Lot, too, about how you can try to control the story and the characters, and that's called plotting, or you can let them go, and that's called storytelling. (Which also, of course, makes me think of Thomas Harris' introduction to Red Dragon and the life Hannibal Lecter took on. "I do not keep falcons -- they live with me.")

So maybe my project this July (31 days, not 30) should be to sit down and write a tie-in novel for a show and see what comes out.

Plans for today: Meeting with the director of Midsummer at 11, going over to the registrar to get an education verification form for my PFD, and then maybe just hanging out in Kiva Han with a coffee and some streaming video. (Ninjavideo and Hulu and Pandora WORK again! ♥__♥)

1965: Richie Tozier, fifteen years old, is in his bedroom, lying on his bed with his hands behind his head and his glasses off, watching the blurry shadows move across his ceiling. (A familiar ceiling, five years after leaving Derry; if you asked him what color the ceiling of his bedroom was in Maine, he couldn't tell you, despite the amount of time he spent in this same pose there.)

The radio is on, blaring the top hits. In spite of his mother's objections, Richie has always played his rock'n'roll loud, because if it ain't loud it ain't rock, thank you very much. A new song comes on, acoustic guitar backed by electric bass, and Bob Dylan's familiar twang comes braying out of the speakers. Dylan's okay -- folksy, bluesy, Richie supposes, but okay. Doesn't sound like anyone else, you gotta give him that. Richie's considered trying a Dylan Voice, but it never seems to fit.

He's not really listening to the words, just drifting on the chords and bassline, until something in the lyrics pierces his daydream and pops it like a balloon.

And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing

Hey Mister Tambo--

And if you asked Richie Tozier why he leapt off the bed and slapped the OFF button on the radio, and stood there squinting warily at it for two minutes afterwards, he couldn't tell you any more than he could tell you the color of his bedroom walls.

HELLOOOOO, INTERNETS.

I am in Cincinnati. YAY. The second plane did not explode. DOUBLE YAY. It was half empty and I had a row to myself. TRIPLE YAY. The flight was uneventful and pleasant and I got some writing and drawing done! QUADRUPLE FREAKING YAY.

Whoo. It has been an exciting day, lemme tell you I tell you what.

I also finished Rose Madder (both drawings in my new sketchbook are related to that), and there are vague ideas circling my head about a fic involving Rosie and the city by the lake and a couple very tall men (though they're not really big enough to meet Pam's definition of somebody interesting, just lanky and taller than anybody has any right to be).

gao, I'm going to have to go back and reread all of Rose's dreams, aren't I.

Now I'm reading The Eyes of the Dragon. (Yes, all of my for-pleasure reading this trip has been Stephen King*. I showed my copy of Rose Madder to someone we were having dinner with the other night and he said "Aah, vacation reading." Which strikes me as dismissive, but what can you do.) A friend of mine recommended this one to me a long, long time ago -- like, elementary- or middle-school long ago -- but it has taken me a long, long time to be able to stomach horror in any medium. Anyway, I picked it up because I remembered Ernie recommended it, and said it wasn't such a horror novel, but I didn't remember anything else of it.

The very first page involves Flagg and a king named Roland. You could say I double-took in the bookstore. Wikipedia tells me that this was published the same year as The Drawing of the Three. So.

Anyway. I suppose I really should get some food, though I'm more keyed up than hungry.

The upshot of everything: I am still alive! YAY.

*Relatedly.

--God, you know what would make me ridiculously happy?

The Loser's Club meets the Friends of Narnia.

Right, on about your regularly scheduled day. I'm off to dinner.

Uh. I, uh. MighthaveaburgeoningRichieTozierheadvoice.

("Sure and it's a foine thing when a lad up and moves in loike that. Jaysus Mary and Joseph!")

And now, a meme!

( All those questions about RP characters. )

Hey you know what's a great idea your first night in a strange bed?

Reading IT by flashlight right before you go to sleep.

( Everyone who's surprised I had a nightmare, raise your hand. )

And then I woke up.

Written out like this, it doesn't seem like as much of a nightmare. I mean, dude, though I say so myself, I come across fairly badass. But God it was scary. When I woke up, I lay there for a long time, scared to close my eyes and imagining awful scenarios where I would turn my head and find Pennywise crouched next to the couch I'm sleeping on, or perched on my parents' bed, or . . .

I have an annoyingly vivid imagination.

. . . But man. I stood up to It.

(I'm going to thank Bev for that; the last section I read before going to sleep was Beverly Rogan Takes a Whuppin. If she could stand up to Tom, I guess -- and with me knowing her backstory -- I knew I could stand up to a monster.

Also, oh Beverly. *hugs her*)

So yeah I'm in Seattle, and the apartment we're in has no wireless, but this is Seattle, land of a thousand coffee shops, so I'll be well-supplied during the day.