It's nearly 6 years since I stopped routinely watching television.

baby_mouse

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Tue Jan-24-06 01:31 PM
Original message

It's nearly 6 years since I stopped routinely watching television.

I stopped walking in from work, switching on the box and allowing my brain's precious time to be wasted on the mindless frothings of newsfelchers and low-budget science fiction authors.

I started going outside, going to resteraunts, going to plays and concerts, looking at pretty mountains and hills and lakes...

And gradully the hideous medusa's baleful grey glare released its grip on my soul.

I started to release my paranoia, my twitching at walking in the street past perfectly ordinary people gradually disappeared as I came to realise that, unlike on television, I have never once ben grabbed by any of them and thrown into a ditch to be shot or stabbed and I could probably tolerate their existence fairly safely, based on my OWN experience. Sometimes I even ask them for the time. And smile.

Nervously, they smile back. He's a bit weird, they must think. Didn't he see that baby being fed into an industrial dogfood mincer on the TV a few hours ago? "Quarter past seven."

"Thank you," I say, and walk on, unafraid that I might be arrested and beaten up suddenly by the passing policeman, who, I notice, is scratching his ear in an entirely human and unauthoritarian way.

I have no sudden compulsion to buy shaving foam that matches my personal image. Why would I? I'm already more than happy with M, my SO, who would I be attracting?

I shave with soap, mostly. It works.

Sometimes I sit down and watch an entire series on TV and I notice that there are really a VERY SMALL number of psychic magnets that can grab the attention for an ENTIRE SERIES about, for example, a 20 something dumb blonde who has been personally chosen to, er kill all the vampires.

Noble Sacrifice. Relationship Problems. Brutal Irony. Oh, if only! Inter-character tensions. Noble Sacrifice. Relationship Problems. Brutal Irony. Oh, if only! Despair. Death. Sex. Despair. Death. Sex. Despair. Death. Sex.... (Rinse. Repeat.)

Interrupted sharply by:

"Are YOU paying TOO much for YOUR CAR INSURANCE?"

or

"Because I'm WORTH IT."

You're worth it. You are worth a cheap bottle of hair conditioner. That is your value.

ZZZZZZZZZz........

The colours run and fade into grey meaningless nastiness. It's an ugly thing, television.

I was in Arran last year just before Christmas and I went out one night from the cottage. It was just on the point of freezing. The sky was a cloudless crystal near-midnight blueish black and every star was out and blazing like...

Like nuclear furnaces so far away that the light itself took hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to reach my eyes, but so huge I could still see them.

The tide pools were as black as polished jet and almost as still. The Moon glared at me with a serious expression, mirroring herself in the flat, metallic surface with the stars, their little dance steps light on the minutely quivering water like the tiny catchlights in one huge, black eye.

I watched for hours as the ice crept over the pools until even the moon was obscured.

Tell me, would this experience really have been improved with ten minute breaks every half hour peppered with beer, chewing gum and cheap holiday commercials?

I had taken my large format camera onto the island. Had I taken a long exposure that night of the Moon and her children, it might have been the best shot I'd ever have taken.

I decided not to.