the moral influence of television

(or "Why I need the Media and Old Men")

I was watching an episode of Northern Exposure last night, minus the mild disturbance when I noticed a spider crawling on the ceiling above my bed and when I might have reacted by climbing onto my night stand and lecturing the spider about manners while my roommate thankfully saved us all by smooshing it, the point is, that I was reminded a little of the point of my writing. I've always dreamed of being not just a construction worker but also a chronicaller of persons like E. B. White and Bradbury in Dandelion Wine. I'm not them. But that's the point and it seems that my interest in life as I live it as opposed to my interest in the life in mystery books like the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes directly correlates to how much I write.
Therefore, I commence writing more full-forcedly this time not to prove that I'm not boring, but to prove that I am not bored.
Which I've tended to be lately.
(Minus all that time spent with my family. and Friends.)

And so, I will tell you now of how I am working with a bear. My documentary boss is a bear and I fought him yesterday. Appropriately it was at our meeting in The Cave.

Bear: (as he reclines in the plastic spiderweb of an office chair) In this opening sequence I think it would be a good idea if we showed a little bit of D and then a little bit of, you know, Ted you can place this little animated car...

And he continued on full lordly.

Marge: I'd like to push back now.

Bear: (surprised) (Is our director who seems to have trouble directing and continues to grow more and more disinterested in this project really going to push for something?) Well, Okay.

Ted, tall and lanky with Dandelion fluff hair and patient face, turns from storyboarding at the white board and sits down on a corner of the table. Bea and Bear turn their spiderweb chairs to face me. I'm certain about this one, because you can't ask me to make a documentary and take away what I make documentaries for.

Me: I think we should just stay with D for that quiet moment, I want us to become connected to D and not the animation, we've got to attach to her. She's important.

Bear: Well, I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on her there, I'm just saying she needs all the help she can get.

Me: I disagree. She doesn't need help. She's the character in our documentary and I don't think she needs that much help that we can't spend 20 seconds with her.

The Film Professor, from whom I've taken five classes and continues to taunt me with thinking I will be hired by him to do something but is such a foggy person, came down to join us in the cave and watched the rest of our meeting. It was a hum drum rest of a regular Post of a Desperate Production meeting.

In the end Bear started saying we could go along with my theory and WHEN (because he's a curmudgeon and a bear) we decide that D needs help-- "You mean IF," says The Film Professor. He'd been fairly quiet up til then keeping his ironic comments to himself.

Bear paused and rolled his eyes, "Yeah, sure, IF it doesn't work we can put in Ted's animation that won't set us back anything."
I told you he's a curmudgeon. I know the secret, though, he wants someone to fight for what they want. So I'll fight.

Well, there's the first exercise in chronicalling. I think I should get better, so if you want to read something worthwhile in twenty years, stick around, please. I need you.

Love,
Marge