I made a very bad choice last night.
Our basement family room is the warmest place in the house. It’s next to the laundry / furnace room, so the heat from the dryer and the boiler always keeps it cozy. We remodeled this summer. There are no books down there yet, just a television and a sofa.
I took a basket of clothes to fold and sat on the couch, flipping through the channels, looking for something to watch. I paused at a scene of a desperate woman talking to a plastic surgeon, who was vile. In fact, the whole show just got more vile and revolting from there, and I'm not talking about the sex or the gruesome surgical procedures in and of themselves; I'm talking about the way people treated each other. Worse than HBO’s Rome. I turned it off after yet another moment of being profoundly glad I’d had a miscarriage--so deeply relieved I was not going to bring another child into this world, but heartsick for the one I already had brought.
And that feeling made me angry; that I should feel that way, clearly means I’ve got my “tent pitched in a world not right”. . . but there are other worlds. I just need to make more conscious and deliberate choices to pitch my tent where I want it to be.
In case you are wondering, the show was called Nip Tuck. Unfortunately I don’t pay enough attention to television even to have been forewarned. Last night’s ambush pushed me to some sort sort of breaking point. I did a Google search on the show, was elated to find I’m not alone, and I signed my name to a petition to squeeze the financial life out of the FX network, unless they rethink their entertainment choices.
Ha! Take that!
But even as I did so, I wondered what is going on with the men who create these shows. I remember reading an interview in Smithsonian magazine about HBO’s Rome. Bruno Heller, the co-creator of the show said: “the series attempts to show the Romans without judging them by modern, Christian morality. Certain things are repressed in our own culture, like the open enjoyment of others’ pain, the desire to make people submit to your will, the guilt-free use of slaves. . . This was all quite normal to the Romans.”
These things are just ‘repressed’, are they? Perhaps in Heller’s damaged psyche, but not, I assure you in my own. So much damage, everywhere. It’s no wonder I feel the need to turn away, repair the damage, and take some serous multi-vitamins.
Where do we turn, though? Towards nature, towards beauty, towards traditional Christmas activity. I can’t think of any place else to go, any place else where God and goodness and inspiration might be.
To bake: Gingersnaps and Orange Cookie Cut-Outs.
To buy: a Christmas Tree.
To dream: of a family getaway.
To go: for a walk with the dog.
To send: some glorious Christmas Cards.
10:17:03 AM 
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