Oh what a tangled web we weave

I’ve been watching Weeds, a show I discovered in 2012 when I had the Showtime channel for a promotional month.  Starring Mary-Louise Parker, I saw a half dozen episodes in 2012 and then forgot about it until I got Netflix and saw it on the lineup.  Score!  It took me a few months to get to it, but I began watching with Season 1, Episode 1 and watching a few in a row in the midnight hours.  It’s the first time I’ve done that, spent hours at a time immersed in a show and I used it as a format for observation, as I would had I stepped into their life with them.  I got to know each character and, thanks to excellent production and editing, got to feel I was right there with them during everything they went through.  Each day I’d take the events into my meditation, as I would my own real life previous day’s events.  

Because it was a part of my real life.  I chose each day to step into their life and remain there for as long as I wanted, and I got to choose when to step away. After some relatively violent episodes, I’d take a few days off because that’s not really my vibe. And when I’d go back, I wouldn’t be as emotionally impacted by the violence as I was before. It seemed kind of normal and expected. Like I barely recoiled when Nancy smacked Celia in the mouth with a handgun at the drug warehouse, knocking out her front teeth.

I recognized that by watching the show some each day, immersing myself in several episodes in a row with no interruption, that was a very powerful focus of attention.  I was slowly desensitizing myself so that the violence wasn’t quite so disturbing.  And I’m someone who doesn’t watch thriller, horror or crime movies.

It made me contemplate friends I’ve known who’ve lived that life: a life of scrambling under the radar for the dollar, running the cons, being territorial, always looking over the shoulder waiting for the hustles, lies and deceptions to karmically return. To them, this was normal.  They had grown accustomed to the scheming and outbursts of violence, so to them it was no biggie.  It was simply a way of life and it was the only way of life they knew.

I saw how it looked logical for the characters to do what they did.  That is, if you accepted their premise, the logic followed.  Always on the run having burned down everything behind them with no thought of anyone but themselves, yet part of the past keeps resurfacing to be looked at and dealt with.

Just as in real life, what we think we left burnt in the ashes will always rise again. As we rise, so does our karma accelerate. The  fewer things we attach ourselves to, the more tethers we cast off, the quicker we get on with our happy life with no fear of judgment or recrimination.  Absolute freedom.

At last watching, Nancy and her kingpin lover are doing ayahuasca and she’s seeing the bigger picture, being illuminated as to what she’s been doing and how it affects everyone around her. It just got interesting.

Thank you, Weeds, there but for the grace of God go I.