Reading Stephen King

Well, it’s been awhile, but I’m reading one of Stephen King’s books again. This is, “From A Buick 8” it reminds me a bit of another one he wrote and danged if I can’t remember the name of it. I want to say it was, “The Tommyknockers”, but that one is too old. It was a recent book of his where folks were in the woods and they all begin to be consumed from the inside by the Things from outer space sort of thing. Sorry I can’t be more specific, but the wonderful thing about his books with me is they all sort of slide in and bump up against each other in my memory. I think that might be because there are so many common threads that Stephen King explores. It’s like an artist who paints and goes through a period of time where all she wants to paint are flowers, or cats, or something like that. It’s a theme that you just can’t shake, where every time you write about it once it’s finished you think to yourself, “You know, I didn’t think about this aspect of it. I think I’ll explore that some too.”

I just love it.

You’d sort of think that some supposedly spiritually minded person wouldn’t be interested in the scary stuff Stephen King writes about, but I am. He’s just a terrific writer. And, I love how his characters both bad and good are really ordinary people. I credit him with me breaking through to the psychic side. Years ago it happened. Ssomewhere I’ve already written about it, but I’ll write about it again.

I’d just quit my job because I figured that now I was officially a writer because I’d just spent 3 years writing a book. It was done. So, I was a writer. My husband was doing well enough that we could afford for me to not be bringing in a steady paycheck and I really, really wanted to have the time to write full time seeing as how I was now a writer and I didn’t want to be a secretary anymore.

Right. Instant writer’s block.

As it happened, I took a year and a half off from work. Now, I'm back again at the same job. Interestingly, the lady they hired to replace me only lasted that long. She left and I went back to the same position. That was 15 years ago and I've been there ever since.

Anyway, back to my story: Then, I caught a cold. Seeing as how I didn’t have to drag my butt to work because I didn’t work anymore I indulged myself in the sick. And, I was sick. It was the worst cold I’ve ever had in my life. This was a doozy. I slept when I could and stayed up the rest of the time. That first week I watched television until I was numb. Already sick I didn’t have a lot of energy to spend doing anything productive. It ended up that I was sleeping a whole lot during the day and awake at night. And, having the television going at night wasn’t all that great because I felt I was disturbing my husband and the family who lived downstairs.

So, it occurred to me that I would really be interested in reading. And, what I wanted to read was Stephen King.

The reason why was that a few months before I quit work I’d taken a swing by the library after work on a Friday afternoon. The idea was that I wanted a really fat book to read over the weekend. I really didn’t care what it was. I just wanted a fat book I could curl up with. So, I was moseying around the new books section and saw a copy of, “ The Stand” by Stephen King. I pulled it off the shelf and had a look at the jacket. To this point in time I had never felt inclined to read anything Stephen King wrote. I was scared to death of this guy. I would change the channel when his movies came on. Nothing had the power to move me faster than the thought of anything Stephen King. It was like riding roller coasters: I just did not do it.

But, I’m holding the fattest book you can imagine in my hands and I’m falling for it like an old bucket tumbling down into a well. I checked it out and read that book in 3 days’ time. By Monday I was done and by Monday I was an official fan of Stephen King. By the way, “The Stand” is an enormous book. It took him 12 years to write. I’ve read it 5 or 6 times since then and will probably read it as many times more in the years to come.

So, anyway, here I am a few months later facing boredom beyond belief with this horrible summer cold still hanging on. I was so totally restless, uncomfortable and noisy in bed that my husband just couldn’t get any rest. Also, I didn’t want to make him sick too, so I sort of set up camp out in the living room for the duration of my cold.

Tired of watching television it occurred to me that I could go get some Stephen King books out of the library. We didn’t have a car in those days, or at least that I remember, because I hauled my sorry, sick butt onto a city bus and tried not to breathe on people. I checked out 35 pounds of Stephen King books and read them all in a week. Then, I went back to the library to turn those in and get more. Three trips I made to the library and I read a boat load of his books during the time that I was so sick.

I overdosed on Stephen King.

The first indication I had that something odd was going on was when I began seeing, “222” everywhere. When I looked at a clock it was at 2:22. When I happened to glance at the microwave it said, “2:22” for the time or for whatever was left to nuke. While I was reading a book I’d notice page 222 as it went by. Actually, that still happens to me. It got to be spooky. What was really spooky was when I told my sister about it and she called me the next day to say she’d just been in their bank’s parking lot and she happened to glance up at the time and temperature sign to see that said 2:22 as well. Like I said, spooky.

Then, I began knowing that the phone was going to ring. Then, I began knowing who was going to be on the phone when it rang. Then, I began having really vivid dreams and those morphed into visions that I had when I wasn’t quite asleep and not quite awake.

It scared the crap out of me.

That’s when I went looking for help. I found something Colin Wilson wrote, that I think was called, “ESP”, but may have been his book, “The Occult”. In it I remember reading that it was okay to have ESP and it wasn’t really such a big deal.

That’s when the shit hit the fan and I was okay with it.

I began reading other books investigating what was happening to me and I eventually, stumbled upon Sanaya Roman and Duane Parker’s ,"Opening to Channel" when I learned how to channel.

So, that’s why I credit Stephen King with me finally opening up to my psychic nature.