Finally.
Goodness, how I love daily inspiration...must start carrying around that portable tape recorder again so that writing can happen more. Sometimes, though, I get lucky enough to have it knock on my door.
I'll talk about the visitor shortly.
I stopped watching TV with any sort of regularity some years back when we decided to get rid of cable for financial reasons and the only thing available was network stuff, most of which I cannot abide: I don't do reality shows, I don't do Desperate Housewives or Lost and although I confess to being one of those people that grew up in a home where the television was constantly on, thus the energy of which is strangely comforting like mashed potatoes can be to other people, I don't like the King of Queens so much as I enjoy the energy and the chatter emitted by the box while I'm making a good curry. The news is useless to me, the weather reports unreliable and unless we're talking a Vincent D'Onofrio episode of Criminal Intent or a really tearjerking ER, I don't have much interest in it or use for it. We've since gotten cable back so that the husband can watch Arsenal beat the English Premiere League's collective asses and I can get into some Intervention from time to time but that's about it. I'm pretty much a books-n-Netflix kind of gal.
I also don't listen to the radio much; my "discovery" of Ryan Adams was met with hilarity by Brian who gleefully informed me that not only was Ryan Adams not to be considered a "discovery" but was actually popular, which was proven to me billion-fold when I ventured to Sonar last summer to see his majesty and company live and found myself swimming in a sea of tan pants and flip flops drinking Red Bull cocktails. I think there was even a girl there wearing glitter. I rely on my friends, coworkers, husband and brother-in-law to hip me to new stuff and usually I'm way late to the party, but I don't care enough about being in fashion to tune into a music station while driving: After all, my iPod is chock full of music new-only-to-me-and-my-granny and I've got catching up to do. I'll hear today's stuff in about three years, and I'm really looking forward to it.
I consider my out-of-touchness with these types of popular culture to be blessings, really, for they allow me to discover things in my own time and to make my own decisions and judgements about things that I find important: Gender, Sex, Race, Class and, for the purpose of this rant, Safety.
See, I feel pretty safe. I've said, on countless occasions and have been validated by friends' published-and-mirrored experiences, that coming of age before my time has steeled me, has created an energy within me that allows me to pass through life with great safety and confidence, fearlessness...only with the birth of my son have I begun to consider that unsafe things might be at large -- broadly, vaguely, theoretically and hyper-hyped at large -- and I've adopted a slight sense of caution that I didn't otherwise have and it's mostly for his sake. We hold hands in the street, we cross with the light, we don't eat blue food or orange cheese or drink brown soda and, on the grandest scale, we lock our doors while driving so that we don't get carjacked.
That last one makes me feel bad, but I'm not looking for affirmation or validation here. I do what I do when I want to do it and for the most part I'm okay with and feel good about the choices I make. I'm not perfect, nor do I portend so. I am also not foolish enough to disbelieve real-life accounts of danger or violence and I know, logically and with great sadness, that some of us -- women, people of color, the diffabled, the elderly -- are at greater risk for random danger and brutality than, say, white men. I'll beg forgiveness for what may be construed as cocky or flippant in this particular diatribe because I think we all understand what I'm getting at, eh?
Safety: If one were to watch the news, one would believe that we live in a particularly unsafe culture, one where mace should be on everyone's keychain and that some neighborhoods are, demographically (which is a nice way of saying, "classically" or "racially") less safe than others to walk through alone, one where it's necessary to look under one's car after shopping to ensure that no psychopath is hiding underneath with a boxcutter to...you get the idea. If I watched the news more frequently and with less cynicism in my heart, I wouldn't dream of walking to the CVS by myself at 1130 on a summer night to get Tylenol for my feverish son -- that would be crazy! Dangerous.
This guy, this white guy with a crewcut and those sneakers with the springs in the heels and a shiny gold wedding band and -- guess?! -- tan shorts rings our bell today and tells me that if we put a sign in our yard, advertisement-style, we will be compensated by his company with a complete and thorough installation of a state-of-the-art security system which, in "this" neighborhood [insert sweeping hand gesture here] is becoming a real necessity. I politely refuse, he mocks surprise and begins his rebuttal, I continue to refuse and finally I tell him that I don't think we're the customers for which he searches.
Whatever do you mean by that? he asks, with great condescension and a smile that I want to make stop by any means necessary; I explain that I don't feel a sense of danger, that I don't buy into the hype that we live in an unsafe neighborhood, an unsafe society, I don't think that my home needs to be armed to the teeth with wires and hotlines and the potential for preschool offsets that can only be undone with clever codewords or complicated series of numbers that my husband will never remember. Three years we've had voicemail and he still has to look on the fridge for the number...anyway, the guy left but not before asking if I thought any of my neighbors would be interested in what he's selling and was confounded by my answer of, "I don't know what kind of things my neighbors want to buy." Nevermind that I'd have to advertise his company on my lawn, but seriously: the Kid would trip it up and we'd get one of those false alarm fines that the city's giving out these days for too many, um, false alarms.
Dude probably loves Ryan Adams.
