with the thoughts you'd be thinkin' you could be another Lincoln

 

On streaming services and You Tube -- stories, stories, stories.  I was thinking about stories being a way for human beings to process experience, and the world.

        Usually if there's a mystery / suspense type of story, I don't set out consciously to solve it myself, to "get ahead" of the ending and then see if I was right.  I always think I'm just going to watch (or listen while doing things) and see how the story unfolds.

        But then sometimes I involuntarily, automatically, start guessing ahead.

        There was a series where -- in one segment, this woman was in charge of an organization that was working to put human traffickers out of business, and bring them to justice.  She attends an event where people are raising money and supporting her organization and discussing their goals, and the progress that's been made in their cause.

        Then -- there's a bad guy at the event, he wants to cause some kind of disturbance, but then he is spotted and the FBI chases him, and everyone has to clear out of there.

        Then it shows the lady arriving back at the hotel (it's in Europe) and as she passes through her room I noticed it was pretty opulent -- the framed artwork on the walls -- and the thought occurred to me, uninvited -- "maybe she's actually on the other side."

And it turned out -- she was one of the human traffickers!  Being supposedly an anti-trafficking activist was just her cover, her mask, her disguise.

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How could anyone really be involved in such a thing as human-trafficking (sex-trafficking, usually)?  Are they inherently evil?

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        I was thinking, too, about stories and why we like them, and need them:  taking in a story, whether it's by watching or listening or reading or even, I guess, gaming -- helps us order our thoughts, our emotions, and the world.  We can make sense of things, in a way.  We can feel that things are organized, and are going to be OK.

        When I was little I saw The Wizard of Oz on our black-and-white TV at my home, in my kindergarten year.  Then I watched it every year after that (once at the Lehmans' house in Dover, Ohio, where the TV was color, so when Dorothy, Toto, and the house landed in Oz it went from black-and-white to color) and every year, even though I knew the ending, I was in awe, every minute.

♫

I could while away the hours

Conferrin' with the flowers,

Consulting with the rain;

And my head I'd be scratchin'

While my thoughts are busy hatchin'

If I only had a brain.

So -- I guess we (all of us kids that age, at the time) watched, not because we were in suspense of what would happen, but rather to see the adventure, danger, challenge -- the process -- and then to see the orderly ending:  "There's no place like home."

        Like a walk around the block:  you know the block, you know what is there, but you walk it to walk it -- to have the process, the exercise.

One year I cried at the part where one of the flying monkeys flaps down to the ground and picks up Toto, Dorothy's little dog.

        But then each year after that, I was ready for that part, braced myself, and did not cry because I could remind myself, Toto doesn't get hurt and he's fine at the end, home safe with Dorothy.  Plus it had dawned on me that the Oz part was a dream.

        (Then Bobby Ewing comes back to life and visits Auntie Em and Uncle Henry -- no, wait, that's somethin' else....)

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On You Tube, episodes of The Love Boat (a faint groan, in the background).  Didn't really watch that when it was on -- I thought it was lame, and middlebrow.

        However, if you're trying to be a writer you can learn from these stories, too.  Every episode seems to have three storylines -- each with its own title, & written by three different writers or writing teams, which I thought was interesting.  And as the episodes pass by while I'm cleaning and cooking and organizing, I sometimes think there are four storylines in some of those -- Why does it only say three, I wonder... I'm not sure.

        The early scenes of many of the episodes -- the crew members greeting passengers as they board -- and -- hitting on them...!  Oh my God, that's soooooooooo Late Seventies!

        Could not believe it.

And something I really do like on that show, have to admit, is the variety of actors who come on as guest stars -- that's who most of the stories are about, so, if you watch several episodes in a row, it's this parade of ones you remember and ones you don't -- "Is that Janet Leigh?!  It is!  It is!"

        Martha Raye.  Ray Bolger - Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, here he is on The Love Boat!  Florence Henderson, Bert Convy, Rhonda Fleming...

And even though there are different plots to the stories, from episode to episode, you know there will be a happy ending, because that's the kind of show it is.

        And your mind gets the exercise and airing, like it walked around the block that it knows.

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{"If I Only Had a Brain," music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Yip Harburg.  1939 film, The Wizard of Oz}

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