Not With a Bang but a Whimper

In 1925 T.S. Elliott wrote The Hollow Men.  I remember reading it in Ms. Pfeiffer’s English class my senior year of high school and thinking to myself within its dark somewhat twisted words, that made me think of scarecrows going to war, it was probably the most powerful thing I ever read.  Its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, much like the rest of Elliott’s work, but it was in its dark beauty that I found meaning beyond post-war Europe.

Elliott writes “We are the hollow men.  We are the stuffed men.  Leaning together headpiece filled with straw.  Alas!”  I think of those little scarecrow men leaning together supporting each other and knowing that they are not alone.  Was it what Elliott had in mind when he wrote it?  Probably not, but it makes me realize that we as humans are always looking to be whole.

Last night I wrote “The End” on my manuscript.  I completed a goal I had had in my head since my early twenties, and at one point decided I would abandon if I hadn’t done it by thirty.  Good thing for me I decided not to keep my word.  What I realized in those last moments as the music roared to life and the closing credits rolled in my head, was it ended like Elliott wrote “Not with a bang but a whimper”.

It is the quiet things that we do in life that sometimes have the greatest impact.  It is the things we don’t seek praise for, but find fulfillment in that sculpt us.  In the moment that I wrote the last line, I knew that it had ended.  I knew that I had crossed a line somewhere between the closest thing that I knew of child birth and graduation. 

When Barbara Walters or Ann Curry ask what happened on that momentous day when I finished my first novel, I hope to tell them I mowed the lawn.  I hope to say that I sat in stunned silence on the phone with one of my closest friends as she screamed “You just fucking wrote a book.”  All I could do was answer her yes I did and stare at the wall because what I knew all the time was possible just never appeared to be probable.

Next month I will take my first steps on the unfamiliar road to publishing.  Like Dorothy I will start at the beginning of the yellow brick road and follow it all the way to the Emerald City.  And like Dorothy, I am definitely going to need a pair of killer shoes.