Recording Buffy

Friday, October 21, 2005 9:44 AM

One of my best friends told me a few years ago when I was going through a really rough patch, that she had a trick to lift her spirits. She tries to think of ten good things that have happened that day. She told me they can be little tiny things if that's all you can find to be glad about, but find ten good things.

So, of course I tried it because, why not. Paying attention to the world around you and making an effort to notice the good stuff on any level couldn't hurt, and I figured it might help lift me out of my (then) current misery. One day when I had started to turn it around, and life didn't look so bare, the highlight was seeing sparrows taking a dust bath, and it pierced my heart with the simple joy of their little flutteriness. This tiny little perfect moment is permanently tattoed on my heart. I still use this technique of ten good things whenever I remember it, because I figure you can keep lifting your spirits till everything around you is so perfectly beautiful you turn yourself into an angel. And who wouldn't want to be an angel, there might even be new colors, and there's flying too.

A lot of what brings me great joy in little doses is making an effort to notice the natural world and be a part of it every day. Mare's tail clouds against a deep blue October afternoon sky is another little memory snapshot that I hold in the happiest part of my heart.

Interactions with people, especially chance interactions with strangers, are also a regular addition to my list of ten things. I find that when I raise the level of attention and good will in my interactions with strangers, it raises the level of those qualities in my interactions with the people who play a larger role in my life.

And, for the past couple years, one of the ten things at least once a week or so has been some little Joss related moment.

The friend who told me to look for ten good things wants to know why I like Joss' work so much that I'd make an effort to get together with people to watch Buffy, Angel and Firefly. Seven seasons is just too much for her to contemplate, and she's not a big SF fan. I know, I know, I like FF best too. It's not just SF, but people have these preconceived notions. So I'm recording a couple of video tapes of some of my favorite Buffy eps. I hope she enjoys them, but I'm also having way lots of fun recording the eps on Fox, and trying to make a Buffy-sketch that might make some sense of the whole thing. Enough to maybe get her interested, not enough to intimidate or overwhelm. Enough to get her to watch some FF when I bring it at Christmastime.

One of my favorite little arcs in Buffy is Bad Willow, so I've recorded "Lover's Walk", and "The Wish". The other day I walked out to a cafe to take a work break. There's a big scary parking lot where I work (I call these walks across the parking lot 'Laura Croft and the Parking Lot of Certain Death' to remind myself to pay attention, because the drivers sure aren't). There's a shiny blue cherry picker that's been parked in the lot for several weeks that I'd really like to borrow to take pictures of things at robin level. So, because I believe that wishing works, I'm making up a story about how I ask to borrow the cherry picker, and the guy at Fred Meyer says yes. Then I realize the episode that the VCR would have recorded that morning was, "Doppelgangland". So, I'm happy to remember this gift I'm making for my friend, and remembering some of the lines from that ep "Oh, I'm all fuzzy" and "I'm a blood sucking fiend! Look at my outfit!". Just as I get to where the cherry picker is parked, I notice there's a fresh banana peel on the ground in front of me and I laugh out loud. Like a little gift from the essense of Willow, a line from the ep my VCR recorded that morning. "I'm eating this banana. Lunchtime be damned!" Magic weirdness.
Now who do I see about that cherry-picker?

There's a lot of moss in OR. Thousands of shapes and sizes, a huge variety of colors and textures, and they really come to life at this time of year. They change color to a brighter g

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