The things that stay with us for a lifetime.

I’m heading towards the half century mark in my life, so I feel quite comfortable talking about “a lifetime” since 50 years is exactly that. 

Supposedly, I have moved on through the various stages of a woman’s life, those stages being, child, woman, mother, crone, (though honestly I don’t like the word Crone... makes me sound like a giant black half witch half bird thing.). And am now supposedly (there’s that word again... ) sitting in my rocking chair, content to impart wisdom on the younger generation that surround me... 

Yeah.. don’t hold your breath for that, cause the only wisdom I have to impart is never try to down two liters of Long Island Ice Tea... it makes your legs fall off. True story!

What I can share though is a small list of books, films, and music that have made an impact on me and continue to stay in my mind years later.

Films... there are a few I love and watch contently over and over again, but only two that still haunt my mind like happy ghosts.

She Lives 1973

I watched that film when I was far too young to even understand half of what I was watching, but my memory of it is so clear that what I didn’t understand when I was 11 I do now. Sadly it never made it onto DVD and I very much doubt it ever will. To this day even the critics are uncertain what they think of this made for TV movie, the acting was  naive, the entire film a little over done, but it had the most amazing music that just brought the whole thing to life... Jim Croce’s Time in a bottle, and Harry Chapin’s All my life’s a Circle, the sad, nostalgic hope filled story did the rest.

The other is “If you could see what I hear” 1982. 

Marc Singer does a realistic job of portraying the blind singer/songwriter Tom Sullivan in this sometimes light hearted story on his life. 

“There is nothing wrong with what you are wearing... it’s your socks. You’ve got them on the wrong feet again.” 

I laughed until I wet myself the first time I watched that, and having found it on Youtube recently, had the same reaction all over again. 

Light heart indeed, but there was also a very dark lesson to be learnt there, and it was incredibly moving when he had to learn it. 

Perhaps not two highly intelligent movies, or deeply epic, or even visually moving. For some not even worth remembering, but they spoke to me, and still do all these years later.

Music.

Ah now that one is difficult, there are so many incredible songs, and songwriters that have followed me through all the different moments of my life, it'd be difficult to pick just two... but I am a singularly simple person, something not a lot of people would agree with, and I like the compliment of that, being considered many faceted, and complicated is an ego boost, but sadly not one I can live up to. 

As a child my favorite song was Master Jack, Four Jacks and a Jill, and strangely enough I still love it, even more now that I actually now understand the lyrics. It speaks of learning and growing, of moving on and letting go. Something I knew far too much of far too young in my life, and my sisters too. 
That’s one of life’s first lessons when you are born of a mother with a Gypsy soul. But .... and let me be very clear on this, while it was a hard lesson to learn, it was met, matched, and passed by the wonder and excitement of seeing so much more of the world, and more importantly the people and cultures in it. I have a diverse group of friends, from all walks of life and all over the world, and I would not trade them for anything.

Nik Kershaw I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me von Celtiemama




Back on track, another of my favorites is “I won’t let the Sun go down on me”, by Nik Kershaw. That song for some reason always makes me pull up my big girl panties, notch up my chin and stand up, no mater how hard life slammed me down. It’s not a particularly clever song, and it really has nothing to do with inner strength or getting up when you’ve been knocked down, but for me it just works.

There are many many more songs that bring me joy when I’m sad and bring me up when I’m down, Jim Croce has to be my favorite singer/songwriter, along with Alanis Morissette, the Bee Gee’s, Rod Stewart (who’s name I could not come up with in a quiz, which I will never live down..) Brian Addams.... the list goes on and on.

Books... oh man, I have an entire wall filled with books, which do not include the 2000 odd books I have on my tablet or the thousands of books I have read and not kept, or lost along the way. 

If by some miracle when my time comes and  I am given a choice on where I wanted to die, I would choose the book room in the British Museum. To end my life there would bring me the greatest joy, because that room has to be the one that fills me with both joy and peace. The very first time I lay eyes on it I burst into tears, I had to let them out, there was no way I could keep that much wonder and reverence inside me. 

Strange then that there are only two sets of books that I consider a my favorites.  The first are The War of Powers and The War of Powers 2  by Richard E Vardeman and Victor Milan. I first read those when my youngest child was a baby, stuck in a small town with very little in the way of entertainment except a very old small cinema that only showed films on the weekends. I found them in the library and was sorely tempted to keep them.  They were the first fantasy books I’d read and they pretty much paved the way for my imagination to find its own world. I spent years trying to find those books, and I can not describe the feeling and gratitude I felt when my sisters found them and gave them to me as a christmas gift nearly ten years later.  

The second is The Black Jewel Trilogy by Anne Bishop. Not everyone can get past the names of the characters, or the world AB has created, and I understand that. A couldn’t they freaked her out a little too much to read the books through. For me it was only a slight issue into maybe the first chapter, after that the characters that bore those names made them their own and I lost myself in their story so completely that it is to this day the only book I have ever actually wept while reading. And while I would love to read it over and over again, the emotional wringer that AB puts her readers through is so intense I find it almost impossible to sleep, eat, or concentrate on anything else for days during and after reading them, my mind constantly filled with the characters, the settings, the story. 

And there it is,