La Vie Boheme

Yesterday, while I was sitting

Yesterday, while I was sitting at home doing absolutely nothing, I managed to catch the last hour of The Secret of Roan Inish, one of my most favorite movies ever. Now, I own it on videotape, but it's always cool to see movies you love being broadcast. Anyway, it's a movie about a little girl in Ireland in the 1940s, trying to find out the truth about her family history. She learns, to no one's surprise who's read anything about the movie, that family legend says they are descended from selkies. The rest of the movie is spent determining the truth of the legend. (Aha, I hear you all saying, now we know Lisa's interest in this movie!)

One of the absolute best parts of the movie -- and what I tuned in just in time to see -- is a retelling of the family legend to Fiona (the little girl) by Tadhg, one of the odd members of the family. With Tadhg's voiceover, we see their ancestor first spying on and then stealing the skin from a selkie. It's a breathtaking sequence, following the main selkie legend (man steals skin, marries selkie, selkie's child tells mother where skin is hidden, selkie returns to the sea) completely and fitting it into the story of this family. The casting here is perfect, and combined with the poetic voiceover, got me inspired to pick up "Midsummer" again, yet another one of my selkie stories -- this one not inspired in any way by any roleplaying character I've had.

I'm stuck with it. Parts of it are lovely, but I have several lovely passages with nothing connecting them. I can't decide what the real point to the story is. I'm debating shelving The Host again, to finish this story; heck, to finish something.