Heat the pins and stab them in

One of the better things about having a memory worse than most retirees is my ability to take up hours and hours and hours watching only the television I like. I hop online and dial up my favorite show, and watch the episodes over and over, never remembering the details or the dialogue, able to watch the same 45 minutes of programming for 3 hours and still laugh at all the jokes and cry at all the tragedies. It really is great, to be able to experience things as though they were new.

Today, I watched Moonlight, a show that just came out this fall. I'm tempted to say that vampire murder thrillers are not usually my cup of tea; that's not really true though. In fact, I'm as big a sucker for melodrama as the next person, and I'm a much bigger sucker for dark and brooding heroes than most modern women. Alex O'Loughlin does a dreadfully handsome tormented hero type.

Even though I can no longer remember the details of the stories I watched, I do retain a sense of what mattered to me in what I saw. And so now I'm contemplating the nature of strength. Not physical strength, necessarily, although that has it's own place and time and is also something I crave, but rather strength of self. That which sustains endurance through the darkest times. That which keeps one moving forward when everything is lost, even when everything stays lost and there is no chance of getting it back. That which shelters and protects little seedlings of hope, when there is no hope. Strength.

I used to think I was strong. Maybe I was strong, once upon a time. And maybe, in spite of everything, I still am.