In These Words ... © copyright 2014 by Lillian Carrero
In board daylight I often find myself reaching to
turn on a light that’s already on. I keep hoping that it has more to do with a
conditioned response than with age waning away at my eyesight. Discovering that I don’t often salivate to
bells ringing is still a good thing.
I like my individuality and I felt a
deep seeded need to impart this sense of self to my children. I like the
uniqueness in my daughters, how different they are from each other and from
me. I like to share in their interest
(but if I have to read even one more manga I think I’ll pull my hair out and
scream). Don’t get me wrong I like the sameness too; I like those things of me
I see in them.
I like it when my girls are open and
honest about their opinions, but I did teach them manners, so they’re
forthright not rude. The honesty though,
I have to admit, takes them off that beaten track, padam, padam, padam. I’d like to take credit for how good they turned
out, but I can’t imagine what I could have done to mold such well-rounded human
beings.
On the other hand, I myself am full of
neurotic tendencies. I like to play a song sometimes on a loop for days. It drives my children crazy. I like every
single bric-a-brac to stay exactly where I put it. Don’t even get me started on
recycling it’s enough to give anyone nightmares. When our dumb-ass mayor
temporarily removed glass from the recycling protocol I was as outraged as I
was relieved.
Needless to say my OCDs extend to
watching and re-watching DVDs. Sometimes I do it just to get the right
narrative tone and voice for characters when I write fan fiction; sometimes
there really is no excuse. I must have watched all ten seasons of Stargate—wait I’m not telling—too many times and
really who does that? It would be nice to say I was going to write a story
based on one of the characters (Daniel Jackson), but I don’t really know that
that story will ever get written or that I’ll ever write it.
There really is something I enjoy
about television series, some more than others and the fact that these stories
go beyond the capability of a two-hour feature. Slow building character
development and story arcs spread out over seasons; really I am a sucker for
that stuff.
But that whole business of watching a
series more than once, well there really is no excuse for that. Writing fan
fiction is a great excuse, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes there is no
end product for me, I just watch again and again. It’s like a song playing on
an endless loop. It’s like reaching, in broad daylight, to turn on a light
that’s already on. It’s something as ephemeral as life immortalized in
celluloid. It’s the individuality of getting from point A to point B, everyone
gets there, but it’s wonderfully beautiful when it’s not the same.
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