Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

My Bucket List

5. Do you have a bucket list? If so, what is on it? If not, why? Week Nine for Welcome to My Reality.

If I think about a so called Bucket list - I do not officially have one, but I think it is an excellent idea. What would I put on my own bucket list?

Paris - writing in some of the cafés that the expats wrote in during the 1920s. I am fascinated with that time period and the literacy scene at the time. I know I can not go back in time (too bad) but I can go experience that part of the world regardless of the time period - it is all relative. Visit the Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop in Paris.

What else would I want to do?

Maybe California - hiking trails as well as seeing the Pacific Ocean. Swimming in that ocean. What else? Boy this would take some thought - I would not want to just plop things on it just for the sake of having things. Paris has been a desire of mine since I was in my teens.
I love exploring nature and would love to explore as much as my walking or biking legs could handle it.

Much of my interest comes from what I have read and who I have read.
I am currently reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLean. She mentions many of the places Hadley and Hemingway went - my curiosity is piqued. I am not a huge Hemingway fan, but his first wife intrigues me. My first read of the Paris expats was a novel by Morley Callaghan - a Canadian writer. Though the mental attitude at the time does not sit so well with me - I want the women to be more independent. Hadley was to a point, but she knew when to bite back and be in the background to let Hemingway feels so much more. Frustratingly so, but that was the times and he seemed to need that kind of woman in his life like that - I get the feeling he was not able to be alone for long - many of his marriages happened within weeks of divorces being finalized. Weakness under the gloss of machismo - sorry, but that is how I see it. He was afraid of his vulnerable side - maybe that is why he drank - to re-establish his imbalance after being so vulnerable in the writing he did. He put all of himself into that- it seemed to strip him down to the very essence of himself. Writing was everything to him.

I think it is important to be that open and that vulnerable and let the writing come from that very part of yourself but I also know that drink it not the place to hide or reseal it inside when you are done. You need to be strong enough to write what you write and the it go. Be more without letting it take you and leaving nothing but a shattered mess.

Sorry, I am getting off topic.

I have also read The Book Thief by Markus Zukaz - the story delved into the world at WW II during Hitler's rein of stupidity. It was wonderful to read a story of Germans who did not support his ideas and strove to be courageous enough to stand up for something more - though hidden within the realm, so that their lives were not lost. I would like to visit Auschwitz - to remember and pay respect to lives lost out of the insanity of one man and the nutcases that followed him.

I guess there is also that desire to see where my own ancestral roots come from - Scotland, England and Ireland. England interests me in that I love reading Jane Austin, as well as the Bronte sisters. I am curious to visit those places they made mention of in their stories. Scotland is tied to Dianna Gabaldon's Outlander Series. Now there is some interesting time travel. Ireland just looks beautiful to me.

Australia interests me as well. It is so vitally different yet the same - My parents had a chance to go there just before I was born - I would have come back to Canada at the age of 2 years if they had gone but it did not pan out. No worries. I will get there.

So Europe, Great Britain and Australia.
Not sure what else or where else but what all goes into a bucket list anyway. I would just like to live an interesting life. I suppose that is all it ocomes comes down to in the end.