the view from my bedroom window

I spent this snowy afternoon lost in “The United States of Tara”, via streaming Netflix.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a woman (played by Toni Collette, one of my favorite actresses; if you haven’t seen “Japanese Story” you need to) who has multiple personality disorder.  At first I felt a bit guilty having wasted four hours watching back-to-back episodes, but the story was so good… suspenseful, engaging, the characters real and flawed.  And then I started thinking about story, how getting lost in a good movie or television series is sometimes necessary to give one’s own brain a break, a rest, a time out.  Getting lost in my own stories has been a challenge lately.  Life is infringing, with too many gaps between productive writing sessions.  I keep losing the threads of my novel; it feels like starting from scratch every time I sit down to write.  I want the luxury of more time than I know what to do with.