The Mousetrap
I suppose it’s fitting that this little image sneaked its way into my head right before I go to sleep for the night.
I’ve just added five or six movies to my Netflix queue, three that were saved on my DVR but that I had to erase to create space, two or three others that Netflix recommended to me and sounded good enough to put at the very end of a very long list. Superb.
Every time I add a movie to my queue, I’m summoned immediately into the hypothetical: What will I be like in three years when movie #235 shows up in my mailbox? What will my mailbox be like? Will the mail carrier have trouble fitting DVDs into it because I still live in an apartment – or will there be room to spare because I’ll live in a house? Whose house? Where?
If a movie really sparks my interest, I’ll add it to the top of my queue. Then I’ll feel had by Netflix, and push that fucker down to two or three, just so I feel in control of the machine. But within a month or two, I’ll see that movie that sparked my interest tonight about ten minutes ago and wonder–
My queue is at 72 movies right now. What shred of optimism I can claim from this list of assignments stems from the obvious fact that I get to watch all these movies, and that my list seems to be growing at a decreasing rate. I am proud to be showing some restraint, at least more than I at one point had shown.
There are lists like this everywhere in my life, in everyone’s life. Netflix organizes my movies. DVR organizes my television shows. I have bookshelves of titles I would absolutely love to read, if only I could drown out the white noise a little better.
I’ve turned into King Hamlet. Asleep in my garden, having a restful nap in a comfortable setting. I left my responsibilities at the door and all I was looking for was a moment away.
In tiptoes Claudius. He pours in the poison when my defenses are down. He fills my head with crap that doesn’t belong there.
Who’s Claudius? Well, I’m also Claudius. The part of me that’s hypnotized by gloss, who’s been trained to accumulate and to accomplish and to feel compelled to obtain satisfaction from those things, even or perhaps necessarily without caring.
If it were to be snowing out my window, which isn’t likely because New York doesn’t have winters anymore, I might undermine the idea of accumulation with the properties of snow, which falls, piles, and eventually melts.
Accumulation like this is overrated and temporary.
Beautiful, but like beauty itself can, it fades.
Fallen blanketing snow is wonderful, comfortable, soothing.
Falling snow is magic.
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