Life In Ordinary Time

TV or Not TV

Just for the record, I'm not reading or listening to anything these days.   I can't seem to read since I moved, and my computer is not set up to play any music.  I didn't even have a computer the first two weeks, and I can't believe how much I missed it.  I felt very isolated without it, like I used to feel without a phone.

I can't knit or crochet either, or do anything much other than working to put my new place together.  And I'm not being a fanatic about that, either.    I can't seem to concentrate on anything.

Hey, but I'm doing great watching TV.   Yes, that's right, the Idiot Box has been capturing most of my attention in the last couple of weeks.  The reason that is, of course, is that I now have cable.  I haven't had it before, I didn't want to spend the money, and the times I tried it, I really didn't watch it so I canceled it.  I have it now because of TV going digital etc so I thought cable would be the easiest way to take care of that.  The problem is if I have it I watch it and it eats up my time.  I thought I watched too much TV when I just had network TV and the few independent stations and PBS.  Now, it's even worse.

The other day when I didn't have a car I stayed home and watched about five episodes of Law & Order, or CSI or one of those shows, one right after the other.  I felt dazed afterward.  Cox Cable has the built-in TV guide (maybe they all do, I don't know) and I feel compelled to check and see what's "on" at various times of the day.  I wouldn't want to miss anything wonderful.  Do I really think that would happen frequently?  How about infrequently?

Well, I think I'm still going to spend the money and get a digital converter box or two for my old TV's.  Just in case I decide to be deprived again and cancel the cable.  When I first moved in, I didn't have the cable and I got all of two stations on my TV.  And I was pretty okay with that,  as long as one was PBS.   

                                                                                            

After Trauma

It is a truth universally acknowledged---no, wait a moment, that was my last post.  Jane Austen, books, etc....

But it is a truth--universally acknowledged or not-- that survivors of trauma tend to react to the normal troubles or stresses of life as if they are repetitions of trauma, at least initially.  It's a knee-jerk reaction.  I assume that it will happen, to some extent, for the rest of my life. 

So when something goes wrong in my life, like car trouble, or losing my job,  I go spinning into a state of panic first of all, and a feeling of helplessness shortly follows.  The helplessness doesn't really reflect who I am these days, but harks back to being a helpless child in a world with abusive adults calling all the shots.

When I'm in the stage where I'm feeling helpless,  the entire weight of it all falls onto me--the weight of living in an evil world that has no good to offer anyone, especially me.  I have to run and hide, if only for an hour.  Sometimes I actually go to bed and pull the covers over my head--which strikes me as pretty pitiful, as it never worked then, they plucked me from my bed routinely--but I still do it.  Somehow, thinking the worst makes me feel better.  Nothing's going to sneak by under my radar.

Then I get up and figure out how I'm going to deal with the situation, and do whatever I have to do.

 

A Book is a Book is a Book?

Re that last post:  I heard them talking about e-books on the radio last weekend and I was trying to imagine what it would be like.  I was thinking, well, it might not be too bad, trying not to poo-poo it automatically and left it at that. 

Then earlier today I connected it up with what I was writing at the end of the last post.  If all books were e-books I wouldn't have an object to be all smarmy and sentimental over.  I can't imagine cherishing the particular computer or cell phone that I happened to read an e-book on (unbidden a picture of a person trying to cuddle a computer comes into my mind).  There would be nothing tangible to cherish.  There's just the air, or the phone lines, or however it works....  But maybe you'd say with a regular book what we cherish is not the object itself, but the world the writer has conjured up, with our cooperation, or that we cherish the writer, and the vision he has shown us, the truths he has helped us see.  All that may be true, and there's nothing tangible there, either.

But.  I'm a person, I have a body, I move it around in space.  I not only think and imagine things, I also see,  touch,  hear, taste and smell them.  And,  actually,  the seeing, touching etc. informs what I think.  I like my tangible objects.  I like my books.  I can hold Jane Austen's  Persuasion in my hand, feeling the cloth of the binding and the smoothness of the page.  I can feel connected to Jane for some mysterious reason, with that book in hand.  Those are her very words, her very thoughts expressed in words on a page.  That I am holding.  In my hands.   How could anyone improve on that, on books?  A compact, portable object, that I can take with me almost anywhere, that's not at all dependent on technology to read.  Just my eyes and my brain.  I'm thinking I'll rest my case right there.