smoke em. if you've got em.

who says tv is not educational? well, i can't. so i've become a soap opera fan like everyone else here. i've started watching downton abbey with downright fervor. i actually can barely wait for sunday nights to watch the improbable mixture of upstairs with downstairs in a 1920's british manor. and it's proven educational for me because quite often one or the other of the characters will speak a line that i don't understand. and so i look them up.

for instance, i now know king canute was a danish king who, like ozzy osborne, thought he could stop the tides from coming in. or wanted to anyway.

and i know that a high cockalorum is someone who thinks they are somethin' somethin' when they aren't much at all.

and well, i've also learned that the lady of shalott was a poem by tennyson about a girl locked in a curse who could only visit life through a mirror because the curse insists that she weave unceasingly. so in part the second, she watches the world go by in a mirror. until, "i'm half sick of shadows" the lady declares. and then she sees her knight and thinking she can break through the curse, she stops the weaving she's been doomed to, and she dies. in the first version of the poem, she dies and that's it. in the second version, her knight sees her dead corpse and laments her loss. i prefer the first version. but nevermind.

and then i also realized that the indigo girls reference the lady in their song "left me a fool." which is a song that i rather like. ok, maybe like is not the right word. relate to? understand? something like that.

the lady of shalott. hmmm

anyway. this weekend, i had two experiences of note. i went to a funeral service with my mother for an old friend of hers. and was delighted by the minister telling of asking her 88 year old friend's response to the question "if you knew the world was going to end in an hour, what would you do?" her answer? no, sappy- "i'd gather round my loved ones" tripe. instead, "i'd buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke every last one."

and god better love this woman, because i sure do. after hearing that.

then, this morning i had a conversation with an old friend that is still whirling around in my head. because quite honestly, i have never really been on the same page as this friend. although i like her and i believe she likes me, we've never seen the world in very much the same way. but surprisingly, we've both come to a point in our lives where we see things quite the same. in that we've both decided that we are perhaps happier than we've ever been, even while neither of us have a significant other in our lives.

and what i told her was that what has made me happy finally is understanding that there is no hope for more in my life than what i have now. and that mostly what i have right now is quite nice. in essence, i don't have to either live in a shadow of something i can't have or die in the trying to attain it. or make it real.

and realizing that, i'm quite blessed with this wonderful freedom to do as i please. i can smoke the whole damn pack of cigarettes if i want. as if i only had an hour to live.

now my friend did differ with me on one point. she said she did still live in a bit of hope that perhaps once in her life that she'd actually feel real love for someone. storybook dream love. and the difference i guess is that i have felt that kind of love in my life. but what i found out was that it wasn't real. it was only an illusion. he was only a shadow.


The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.

"Everybody loves a hero, an image to create, antithesis of everything inside ourselves we hate, but you'd better close your eyes when it's time for them to die, because you'd hate to think the life you'd build upon them was a lie."

so the point is, from now on, instead of dreaming of that illusion that he was a man worthy of loving and dying for or that there is any such man as that for me, i am just happy with the freedom that is real in my life.

because i think what is most important of all, is that i'm no longer required to weave without ceasing. that's happiness enough, i think. and my new motto is "smoke em, if you've got em."