“Go then, there are other worlds than these,” were the final words of the young Jake Chambers, uttered before Roland (Deschain) allowed him to plunge into a chasm and to his death presumably. This scene is depicted in Stephen King’s masterpiece ‘The Gunslinger,’ as the boy and his hardened and world-wearied compatriot draw ever-closer to the elusive Man in Black. Damn Walter. Jake dies. Roland Deschain allows him to die, understanding if he saves the boy, he will never catch the fleeing figure. So he chooses addiction over salvation. There are other worlds to save. Except that the Dark Tower does not fully respect a linear evolution of time and death. Jake came back later. He lived in many different worlds. He died many times. He never really died, I think. Roland chases shadows, his true mission unrequited on the final page of the culmination of The Dark Tower. Throughout our lives we chase that which does naught but tap us tauntingly on the shoulder and proffer obscene facial gestures as a comment on our foolish efforts. I have that quote tattooed now, as of this past Friday (it is now Monday the 20th of May), on my left shoulder blade.
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
I love the Dark Tower with all of my soul. I find it to transcend petty pleasure-reading fiction I pick up from a dusty stack of books. It is my bible. I was a junkie once, too. Like Eddie. Like Roland, too. Roland Deschain that is. He and I. He, a true Roland, if you lend merit to fictitious people, and I, a false Roland, a mere name to poorly veil a legitimate identity. I guess we’re both imposters when you think about it. And yet the pages breathes into us the kiss of life. Without your readership we are merely unloved static symbols upon an unopened lackluster page. We become real through the machinations of your mind. You give us the power to speak. Thank you for that blessing. I feel as though the only time I am ever truly heard is through my writing. I am forever indebted to you.
Like anyone who has ever picked up pipes or needles, like anyone who has found them chained to their arm when they tried to set them down for good, I know what it feels like to be a junkie. I am among that faceless mass that knows that hurt of a fruitless quest that provides no true fulfilment. In Roland’s arduous journey to the fabled Dark Tower, which resolved itself in nothing but a ring of dead friends and an invalidation of every moment along the way, he found himself not a step further than the place in which he began his quest. I found myself standing in footsteps I made years ago. Roland Deschain and Roland (myself) are one and the same, in essence. We tossed away the entire world we cupped in our hands, the values of friendship and morality in the pursuit of the cancerous and the unattainable apple of Eden that we envisioned in our minds. Our quests left us bloodied and broken in the dust and the shadows of our former selves. Again and again we began our journey from scratch, never once the wiser. We never once took a step forward. We merely regressed into ourselves, into the rampant obsession festering malevolently within us like a virus. It consumed us, body and soul.
I want to kill myself right now. It is 8:22pm on Tuesday, May 21st, 2013. I really want to f*****g kill myself. I want a gun. I want to raise the gun a few inches from my left temple and pull the f*****g trigger. I want to see the red mist hang in the air and shimmer towards the table in a fluorescent cloud of physical release. In the military, there is a thing known as ‘the red mist.’ That puff of red that you see when you nail a person right in the right spot with a bullet. I want that f*****g satisfaction. That thrilling thump and that red burst. I want to do it to myself. I want to translate all of the fucked up emptiness and blankess screaming inside my head into something physical. I want to blow my brains onto paper. I want to meet death. I bet he’s cool.
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