Everything Old Is New Again
aka Some Slightly Belated Christmas Musings and a Tiny Bit of Highlander...
I guess, by now it is safe to say that I survived Christmas in pretty good shape. Trying to achieve just the right mixture of activity and peaceful seclusion has worked out surprisingly well. I prepared, did, enjoyed and had guests, but also found the time to grant myself a little bit of quiet as well as the time to commemorate my mum. Dad and I had two very nice dinners. People gave me more presents than I actually deserve and thanks to Cavendish and Vashtan who came over for some christmassy baking orgy and present exchange, decorating the tree turned out not half the depressing event it could have been.
Looking back, not only on this year's Christmas but also on a couple of past ones, I have come to realize how much the feast's gravity center has actually shifted. Once, in the mid-seventies, we started out pretty much like every archetypical German family does. Lots of relatives, carol singing, the seemingly inevitable reading of certain well known Bible passages. By now, we have reduced the traces of Christianity and gray, self-dissolving rituals to an absolute minimum. The relatives have been replaced with friends and instead of celebrating the birth of Jesus, there is this hard to explain, but deep and vibrant feeling of gratefulness. Being grateful for the wonderful people who never cease to support and inspire me. Being grateful for the small glimpes of universal beauty I was able to catch. The relative peace that I live in.
I think, I like the new Christmas much better than the old one, even though I'm a somewhat conservative soul who finds changes rather scary.
Maybe, it is exactly this tendency to keep and to cling, which causes me to collect and archive things the way I do; regardless whether it's books, videotapes, postcards or coffee mugs *g*.
Opening the cupboard and grabbing just exactly the Highlander tapes that I wanted (early Methos episodes, from "Methos" till "One Minute Past Midnight", "Indescretions", "To Be"/"Not to Be") filled me with an intriguing sense of familiarity and a fuzzy kind of warmth that I had not expected. My relationship with this show has always been a difficult one. Despite the best efforts and patience of selenaK and blackkitty13, probably the two major Duncan supporters amongst my friends, I never really got to the core of Duncan MacLeod, but remained one of those viewers whose affection was strictly reserved for the supporting characters. Methos, Joe, Amanda, Fitz, Richie; in exactly that order.
Methos: Timelessness and ambiguity. Man of a thousand lives. Killer and victim. Puppeteer and chameleon. Pop Culture and Classics.
Joe: Passion and loyalty. Torn between roots, tradition and his longing for truth.
Amanda: vivacious, in the best sense of the word.
Fitz: hilarious, unique.
Richie: Innocent heart, try and error. Searching for a fixed point from which to gain sense and direction. Struggle. Died way too soon, just when he became interesting.
Rewatching those tapes after such a long time with new and fresh eyes made me realize a few things I had missed during the first run.
I guess, by now it is safe to say that I survived Christmas in pretty good shape. Trying to achieve just the right mixture of activity and peaceful seclusion has worked out surprisingly well. I prepared, did, enjoyed and had guests, but also found the time to grant myself a little bit of quiet as well as the time to commemorate my mum. Dad and I had two very nice dinners. People gave me more presents than I actually deserve and thanks to Cavendish and Vashtan who came over for some christmassy baking orgy and present exchange, decorating the tree turned out not half the depressing event it could have been.
Looking back, not only on this year's Christmas but also on a couple of past ones, I have come to realize how much the feast's gravity center has actually shifted. Once, in the mid-seventies, we started out pretty much like every archetypical German family does. Lots of relatives, carol singing, the seemingly inevitable reading of certain well known Bible passages. By now, we have reduced the traces of Christianity and gray, self-dissolving rituals to an absolute minimum. The relatives have been replaced with friends and instead of celebrating the birth of Jesus, there is this hard to explain, but deep and vibrant feeling of gratefulness. Being grateful for the wonderful people who never cease to support and inspire me. Being grateful for the small glimpes of universal beauty I was able to catch. The relative peace that I live in.
I think, I like the new Christmas much better than the old one, even though I'm a somewhat conservative soul who finds changes rather scary.
Maybe, it is exactly this tendency to keep and to cling, which causes me to collect and archive things the way I do; regardless whether it's books, videotapes, postcards or coffee mugs *g*.
Opening the cupboard and grabbing just exactly the Highlander tapes that I wanted (early Methos episodes, from "Methos" till "One Minute Past Midnight", "Indescretions", "To Be"/"Not to Be") filled me with an intriguing sense of familiarity and a fuzzy kind of warmth that I had not expected. My relationship with this show has always been a difficult one. Despite the best efforts and patience of selenaK and blackkitty13, probably the two major Duncan supporters amongst my friends, I never really got to the core of Duncan MacLeod, but remained one of those viewers whose affection was strictly reserved for the supporting characters. Methos, Joe, Amanda, Fitz, Richie; in exactly that order.
Methos: Timelessness and ambiguity. Man of a thousand lives. Killer and victim. Puppeteer and chameleon. Pop Culture and Classics.
Joe: Passion and loyalty. Torn between roots, tradition and his longing for truth.
Amanda: vivacious, in the best sense of the word.
Fitz: hilarious, unique.
Richie: Innocent heart, try and error. Searching for a fixed point from which to gain sense and direction. Struggle. Died way too soon, just when he became interesting.
Rewatching those tapes after such a long time with new and fresh eyes made me realize a few things I had missed during the first run.