Je me souviens
2010 03 15 | journal
I tend to like watching things by marathon; whole seasons of a TV show, movie series, that sort of thing. When you work the hours I do, sometimes you end up with odd amounts of hours and times of day to fill, in which it’s not always possible to do much else. You really get into the mood of a thing this way, into its patterns, into the intricacies of story and person - especially when it’s a developing thing.
With M*A*S*H you see how many times they reused a joke; and, believe it or not, in 11 seasons of production they actually reused very few punchlines. During the last season or so, mind you, things got very thin - a little less comedic, I suppose; a little duller; perhaps they were getting a bit bored. But, again, after 11 seaons one could hardly expect less.
I just finished watching season 11 - except for the farewell episode. The second last episode, As Time Goes By, always makes me a little weepy. They put together a time capsule of items they feel symbolise their presence in Korea - Radar’s teddy bear, one of Klinger’s dresses, army boots. There was a time capsule buried at one of my old high schools. I was not present at the unearthing, but I did hear that there was a prom dress and a yearbook inside, amongst other such things.
I like the idea of time capsules. But I’m a sentimentalist, and a pack rat. I like tangible pieces of memory to go along with the more ephemeral things. I used to be a little too attached to things, feeling too much loss at the loss of particular items; sometimes almost feeling that I myself had lost a part of myself by having lost some item or other.
While I still miss the items, I did eventually learn that they mean very little. The memories themselves were the most important things. The things I remember most, for example, are not items - they are words, moments, a smile.
Still, though, I wonder what I would put into a capsule to preserve some salient part of me. What defines me enough that I’d want posterity to be party to it? A diary? A teabag? A pair of glasses?