Posts tagged with "TV shows"

cum dignitate otium, or, les Cent Jours

At some point in my ear­ly adult­hood, I found it far more enjoy­able to par­take in some­thing for the first time when it was in the com­pa­ny of anoth­er – not only as an intro­duc­tion but a time stamp in the rela­tion­ship.

However, this habit even­tu­al­ly became a rein­force­ment (and tes­ta­ment) of a world­view that did­n’t leave room for feel­ings of inher­ent val­ue. I would deny myself any form of plea­sure unless I was with anoth­er per­son1. It’s like I need­ed some­one to val­i­date those expe­ri­ences, and did­n’t know how to give myself per­mis­sion to enjoy them oth­er­wise.

One might have believed that many painful years alone would give me the chance to devel­op a bet­ter sense of self-com­pas­sion, but a career has a way of con­ceal­ing such inad­e­qua­cies. That’s why I had as much grow­ing to do as Heather did, even though I was the one to ini­ti­ate the heal­ing sep­a­ra­tion. Three months would cer­tain­ly be far too long for me to tide myself over with chores or mind­less busy­work. An aver­sion to idle­ness would inevitably lead me to find ways of occu­py­ing my time in a more mean­ing­ful way, and I would be respon­si­ble to no one but myself.

Spending some time in exile also seemed like an effec­tive way for me to learn how to pri­or­i­tize myself, to fig­ure out my wants and needs, to dis­cov­er who I tru­ly am when the mask is down2. Unfortunately, it was­n’t prac­ti­cal for either of us to live apart, even though a com­plete break would have giv­en me a bet­ter chance to heal. As Heather was still work­ing from home3, I spent whole days with the office with the door closed and made it my goal to pass the time in enjoy­able ways.

Continue read­ing “cum dig­ni­tate otium, or, les Cent Jours”…

  1. Another rea­son los­ing L____ was so hard; she was the only oth­er per­son in my life who made it a point not to watch our shows until we were togeth­er. [↩]
  2. How easy this is to for­get after years of cohab­i­ta­tion. [↩]
  3. The pan­dem­ic was in the sec­ond wave. [↩]

Six Feet Deep

WARNING: Massive spoil­ers ahead.

An old girl­friend intro­duced me to Six Feet Under more than a decade ago, but it turned into such a grind that I man­aged to fin­ish the series only last week. There’s a lot of com­plex dra­ma with­out sta­bil­i­ty to bal­ance it out, a lot more ten­sion than res­o­lu­tion. One of the most com­mon themes is char­ac­ters seek­ing hap­pi­ness in all the wrong places, just to escape the depress­ing real­i­ty of their lives, and usu­al­ly end­ing up worse for it.

Ruth, George, and Maggie

“For your infor­ma­tion, Miss High-and-Mighty, this is life. People have crises. They push each other’s but­tons. They inflict pain on one anoth­er. And once in a fuck­ing blue moon, they bring out the best in each oth­er. But most­ly, they bring out the worst.”

It was­n’t easy to get through five sea­sons of peo­ple mak­ing ter­ri­ble deci­sions in their rela­tion­ships, and watch­ing those deci­sions haunt them lat­er.

Continue read­ing “Six Feet Deep”…

A Weekend with Darren

I had Darren over from Toronto for the week­end. We were going to do a movie marathon at the the­atre — three in a day — but the movies all sucked. Disturbia? Georgia Rule? Please. Instead, I bought the first sea­son of Six Feet Under, and we fin­ished the rough­ly 11 hour sea­son over two days. Now I can re-watch it with Bronwen and lend it to Pat. To be hon­est, I’d seen up to the sec­ond sea­son before, but I was too stoned to remem­ber most of it.

Thumbnail: Air-tight tea container

Thumbnail: Chai tea

Darren also gave me a nice tea con­tain­er. It’s rather large, since I buy my tea 50mg at a time, but bet­ter too big than too small. He also got me some chai tea, con­sid­ered a well­ness blend. When I asked him what for, he could­n’t give me a rea­son. I love gifts for no rea­son.

We shared our tat­too ideas, and his was the Chinese char­ac­ter for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few peo­ple I can talk open­ly with about love. We’re such hope­less roman­tics. We tell each oth­er that we’ll nev­er be mar­ried, not to be self-depra­cat­ing, but to be hon­est with our­selves. We have our ideals, and we’ll nev­er set­tle for any­thing less. It’s com­fort­ing to know that we’re not alone in our quixot­ic beliefs.

An Odd Mood Lately

I spend my time squar­ing away every­thing in my room so that I’m com­fort­able enough to write. The extra cables are gone, as well as the ran­dom receipts and bus trans­fers that some­how end up on the car­pet. My mir­rors are all in place, mak­ing the room seem twice as big, but I when I look I only see myself, slouched com­fort­ably in my chair, hood over my head. Even Dolly has won­dered in to lay her­self flat on the emp­ty floor. By the time I’m done clean­ing, I’m at a loss for all the things I’ve been try­ing to get into well struc­tured para­graphs.

A new episode of Trailer Park Boys is play­ing on Showcase, and I’m watch­ing it with the sound off because too much infor­ma­tion would ruin the fourth sea­son, some­thing I’m deter­mined to see in order from the begin­ning. Ricky’s in a high school, com­plete­ly out of place as a thir­ty-some­thing man in shop class try­ing to make some hash or grow some weed or har­vest some kind of nar­cot­ic, and this only adds to my amuse­ment.

I’ve been let­ting my hair grow out, à la Matt Heafy in the video for Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr. Somehow, I’ve only now dis­cov­ered that my hair nat­u­ral­ly grows towards the front, and by brush­ing it for­ward, it still looks respectable when I haven’t had it cut in a month and a half.

I’ve been in an odd mood late­ly. Thoughts branch off in my mind, but noth­ing seems sol­id enough to fol­low through. Inspiration always comes the day after today.

Trailer Park Awesome

I was plan­ning on writ­ing some­thing else, but had the sug­gen urge to con­fess that I was watch­ing Trailer Park Boys with four oth­er guys yes­ter­day and it was the Christmas spe­cial where Jono is all prep­py and Randy is giv­ing hand­jobs for cheese­burg­ers before he becomes assis­tant super­in­ten­dent, when Bubbles is sit­ting with his present in his lap giv­en to him by his par­ents before they left him when he was young, and Ricky tells him to open it because they’re his fam­i­ly, so I start­ed to cry but no one noticed, and I can’t stop think­ing about how fuck­ing stu­pid it is, and I won­der if any­one ever believes me or thinks I’m doing it for atten­tion or what­ev­er because it makes no fuck­ing sense to me.