Thursday, June 21, 2007

Eyeballs and Deadwood



Does not CommonLaw have the most beautiful iris you have ever seen? It's like the wing of a butterfly. Lilly too. My eyes are brown, and I think they are also beautiful, but I just couldn't get the picture I wanted. My eyes are like an autumn leaf, with dark and light brown, and little smears of olive and almost gold. Maybe someday when we have money for a close up lense (ha!). I'm sure there's a more technical term than that, but whateva.

I have blue sunglasses; they are scratched to hell because I have had them for four years now. I was thinking about them because I was trying to figure out what it is that I love so much about "the old west", from Little House on the Prairie to Deadwood. They are very different from each other, one being rated G and the other very R, but they're from the same time period. It's not like I would want to live back then, unless maybe I was white and male, because women and minorities had it pretty bad. Sure there were exceptions, but still. Laura from little house didn't think women should vote, and she seemed pretty sheltered. And this is a real live person, eek.

I decided a large part of the attraction is the pre consumerism of the time. There was no plastic, styrofoam, etc. And while my sunglasses are plastic, who keeps sunglasses for 4 years? Without losing them? And I know when I do get tired of the slight blur from countless scratches, I will first look for more from that brand. That's what "stuff" was like back then, you didn't buy things for the sole purpose of being cheap, you bought it for the reliability and quality. Don't get me wrong though, I take great advantage of cheap junk, as wasteful as disposable things are. The last dvd player I bought was 40 bucks at Kmart, and it's lasted a good year and a half or 2 now. Even elecctronics used to be longer lasting. I have the same alarm clock I've had since I was 16, that's 12 years. My last stereo made it 10 years. It just died, but CommonLaw bought me a "new" one at a garage sale for 10 dollars...yay! But still, imagine having one cup, your only cup, for 30 years. Crazy!

Another awesome thing about back then was how much closer you were to the basics. Yeah yeah, running to the outhouse in a blizzard sucked, I'm sure. What I'm saying is, you could go get a huge chunk of land, for free, and if you worked really hard you were rewarded. You ate potatoes when they were ripe, and you hunkered down in winter with the stored fruit of your labor. Today you work really hard, and you go to the store to trade paper representation of your labor for asparagus flown in from chili cuz it's so not in season locally. And forget geting land, no, the rewards for working rreally hard now are that you made it to the next day. Not to sound too bitter, believe me, I LOVE my refrigerator, computer, laundromat- okay not so much the laundromat, but the machines in it, yes. That's why, if for some crazy reason I do ever get my own land, I'll have the best of both worlds. Grow as much food as I can, and have solar, wind, and, on grey still days, a giant hamster wheel for my kitties.

I know, it sounds a bit idealized, but that's what dreams are for. And until then, I have Deadwood. Yes, season three is finally out on dvd. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes not having tv sucks. You have to wait till stuff comes out and by then everyone's already seen it and spoilers abound. I remember one time (CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD) I had waited and waited for the movie The Notebook to come out, and I mentioned it at work. A coworker said "Oh, it's so good and sad. They BOTH DIE on THE SAME DAY". Also, I was listening to Teri Gross on NPR, and she was interviewing the guy who plays Nate on Six Feet Under about the last season. Which I had yet to see. I should have just turned it off. And she asks, " How do you feel about your character dying?" AAARRRGGHHHH!
Anyway, I plan to watch the first two seasons of Deadwood and then the last one, not all at once, but without any other netflix in between. And I'll be dreaming about my future, though I won't have Calamity Jane to shoot whiskey with or any of E.B.'s self pitying diatribe to chuckle about over coffe with Swearengen. Aw what the heck, it's my dream. Who's for poker? Wild Bill?

P.S. I LOVE BULLOCK.
OMG P.P.S HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE!

1 comment:

Maewen Archer said...

I think you read my mind -- I constantly wish for the days when you could work hard and it would earn you a nice place and land. I think I'd trade all the conveniences I have in a second. OK, maybe not all -- but the best of both worlds sounds good. (Hadn't considered a cat powered generator -- hmmmm.... :)