larry rivers
I'm seeing new reasons why I'm glad to live on Waterfall Road. Almost anywhere Appalachian would do, but this particular spot, my home, is the very place that will do. Every day when I see the news of the day before, it affirms a saying by a friend of several years ago, It's time to move higher up the mountain. I feel like I am in process of moving higher up the mountain again. My periods of moving higher up the mountain have been enough that I feel like a Himalayan climber; climb as much as you can in one day, set up a new camp with tents for sleeping in to go from there in first light. I'm satisfied with my separation from the worries of what is going on "out there," the world around me, the world of commerce. Alas, commerce is all that's going on out there. It's too boring to participate in. Anywhere I go I'm required to have money to spend. I stay home more than I ever have, and want to more. I don't know if I pay attention to current events and develop an attitude from what I learn there and project it onto the world around me, or if the human condition is getting as weird as it seems like it is. Or maybe I'm not the only one made crazy by media. I've found that when everybody is doing something, tv is the influence. The styles I see change in the people around me are from television. I can read the attitude of television seeing it in the people of my life, peaceable people not generating headlines. And for the first time in my life, I'm hearing somebody say every once in awhile, "I don't watch television anymore," or, "I don't watch much television." I seldom know what to say when somebody says they don't watch tv anymore. I want to tell them this is the beginning of a new and better life for them, but don't. I can't say I'm heartened to find a few people aren't paying tv any mind. I'm not an anti-television missionary. I figure it has its role for the people that need it. I don't need it, don't want it, can't tolerate it for myself, but don't believe it's necessary for me to browbeat anybody with my point of view. My point of view is my own. Your point of view is your own. I can appreciate yours without denying my own. What you can appreciate of mine does not deny your own.
larry rivers
It has happened several times in the last months that somebody I'm talking with mentions they don't watch television anymore. It comes about because I expect everybody around me is watching it, so I mention something I got from internet assuming they got it from television, and am told they don't watch. I'm wondering if this is a trend. Everyone who says they aren't watching it anymore says it almost apologetically, like they're admitting to feeling patriotism wane. I can't assess anything from my new findings that some people are turning away from its influence, though it feels good to see someone I know taking a turn toward a better life. Better in that the clutter of commercials jangling in their heads takes less precedence. I still have in my head commercials from the 1950s, the last decade I watched tv: halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair; from the land of sky-blue wa-a-ters; he said that she said that he had halitosis; Meeska, mooska, mouska-teer, mouse cartoon time now is here. I've carried that nonsense in my head about all my life. Individually, memories of commercial jingles are more or less benign, but a head full of them from watching tv all my life would be maddening. I'd be a master at trivial pursuit. Back when I had the misfortune to be caught into playing Trivial Pursuit, the 1980s, I did terribly on the low score questions. They're all about television. People in the game would taunt me about not being able to answer the questions. You can do better than that. Like I'm not participating. Then we get into the high score questions and they're often from reading; suddenly, I'm scoring and they're not. I win and they're pist with me for my arcane reading. When rape is epidemic, look to television for the key. When cops killing people and saying he had a gun is epidemic, look to television for why. I call much of our social unrest artificial, because it is created by television, not by life circumstances. It is important to me for self to live everyday life ethically. I cannot have a head full of television and live ethically. Driving home from watching tv all afternoon on Sunday, the race, golf, football, basketball, baseball, at least a thousand commercials, my head is spinning and I need a week of no tv to be able to face it again the next Sunday.
larry rivers
larry rivers
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