Excerpt

So, last night I was falling asleep listening to music on my brand new MP3 player (no, I didn't get an ipod or a Zune and it's only 8G but plenty big enough, I think, to hold all my music, even my crazy broadway show tunes). And if you guys are like me and I'm pretty sure that at least a couple of you are, you have songs on there that you've never even heard, right? Yeah, because the software that came with this piece of beautiful flawed technology loaded every fucking album (yes, I still call them that) that I had ever bothered to rip (not to mention...every picture, every video, just pretty much every media file that it could find).

Insert manic melt-down moment here.

Reset.

Delete.

Let's start over.

Fast forward and then rewind back to last night...

As I was flipping through my songs like a hyperactive flea on too many Red Bulls and Green Tea, I stopped on a song by Steve Earle called "Billy Austin". Pretty soon, before I had even realized, I was way into it. He's such a great storyteller and it's all about a guy who ends up on death row after shooting a gas station attendant for no good reason. Made me get all emo and cry a little, yes, the song was sad enough and real enough, but yes, the song was that fucking good. Really good music always makes me cry. I don't know why.

Wow, I'm getting a little long here and I bet you guys are thinking this would lead to me posting the lyrics or the video to that song, but, nah...you can go discover Steve Earle for yourselves if you so wanna. I'll leave that up to you.

So my not-flashy, little credit card sized, headache also came with a bunch of pre-loaded stuffs...videos, pictures, and ahhhhhhhhh, audio books...can you see where I am going with this? Probaby not, because I led you all here blindfolded.

Time for the reveal...

Duma Key
by: Stephen King

How to draw a picture

Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember.

How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe.

Makes you think, doesn't it?