When the Past Becomes Present.

I spent more than two and a half hours last night talking to the Runner. I hadn’t had a real conversation with him for nearly twenty years but he sent me a Christmas Card and I thought Hmm - in guy speak (a language in which I am fluent) a Christmas card after never getting one before is an invitation to be closer friends. So I called him a few days ago to say thank you and he called me back last night. It was a lovely conversation, sometimes quite hard in spots, and yet surprisingly easy all in all. A kind of trust there that you can’t buy and a sweet nostalgic tenderness that you can’t fake.

You’ll laugh when I tell you that he hadn’t read this blog and therefore had no idea that I just wrote about him a few days ago. Serendipity? I talk about him out loud for the first time in years and then the card and the call? I was even brave enough to read the bit I wrote about him over the phone. Hey? Look it me and my courage, eh?

Not that we hadn’t seen each other, we are sort of related so always on each other’s radar a bit. We’ve seen each other about once a year or so at some family thing and said the hey, how are ya’s. But all very superficial kinda stuff. This conversation was very different. It was the who have you turned into conversation and where are we really going anyway with our lives conversation.

We talked up and down the last twenty years and pretty much each and every family member thru triumph and tragedy. We talked a lot about family and who we thought we were. We talked about Mastery – me of the word and him of the flesh. He is one of those people that has maintained a high level of fitness his whole life long which is the envy of all who know him, including me. We talked too much about my younger sister, which made me a bit jealous, and about neither of us having kids, which made us both a bit sad.

In summary we talked about love. The family kind and the friend kind and the marital kind and the self kind and the of life kind. It was a good conversation. I hope we have another one soon.

Courage and Alan Ball back on the bus

Courage. Not what I would consider my strong point really. Courage to overcome adversity, insult, being dumped by your fiancé for someone stupider, shorter, less attractive and less educated (whoops! Where’d that little toad come from?) Of course she did not have my scintillating intellect which the vast majority of men are really not interested in waking up to day after day, year after year. That's what I tell myself people, gotta find some way to sleep at night. But I digress. Because this is my blog and I can so – Phhhthttt!

Anyhooo – what I am trying to do is work up to a retraction without it being an outright apology. Wish me luck with that. This all to do with my previous comments about the TV show True Blood and Alan Ball (exec prod) being off my bus based on a rather difficult episode of said TV show. Now I did not abandon, boycott or in any other way abandon my viewing of the show, this despite my previous assertion that I was going to give all future episodes a pass in support of my Line. Fortunately for me, I draw my line in the sand, which as we all know is a very mutable substance subject to the vagaries of whatever wind is blowing.

I have watched and enjoyed fully the two episodes following the one in question and fully enjoyed them. My writer’s mind supplying the reasoning is that is because they were both far superior to the icky episode in question. My scientist’s mind laughing all the while into my hand with a little cough, “Rat ionization! Rationalization!”

It is an admission I make with a touch of chagrin that I love Vampire Lore and I read it all and watch most of it too. Finally I am beginning to foment my own take on the mythology so look the hell out people, something wicked is definitely this way coming.

But I digress again. Okay fine. I’m sorry Alan Ball and the writer/producers of True Blood, though I still think you crossed the line with that episode I can now appreciate where you were going and choke on my early censure. Sort of. Cause taken in isolation I still don’t think I was wrong. It was over the line. But I respect that you’ve got to flirt with your line the same way that I’ve got to flirt with mine. And while I suppose in the scheme of the universe it matters little as I am to you-no-one and nothing;I do hope you appreciate how much even this half assed apology cost me. I hate being even a little wrong. Because I am never wrong. Well. About men maybe. Stories, never.