Change. Then Change Again.

I keep blog ideas in a file on my computer.  They could be just a sentence or even a few words.  For about three or four years, written at the top of the page, I had the phrase: Change. Then change again.  I ‘m sure I had a big idea when I typed that in my list of ideas, but I forgot what my point was.  It sat there for a long time.  Now, in the midst of the pandemic, when my kids are now adults, and that we’re moving out of the house we’ve lived in for thirteen years, I’ve found the meaning again.

I have never feared change.  Ever.  Even in the depths of my anxiety and self-loathing, it’s never been a fear of mine.  I’ve shrunk from it and been intimidated, and I sure as hell had issues making decisions.  But I always knew that it was inevitable.  It was as natural as the sun rising and the leaves changing in the fall. To fight it is to fight nature, and why the hell would you do that?

Sometimes I want to change just to change.  It’s time.  You can feel it.  This house we’re leaving is fine.  We could spend years fixing it up and we like our town.  But Amy and know it’s been…used up.  The kids are grown.  They happen to be living here at the moment though a mix of different circumstances, but those three people are young adults. The kids they used to be grew up here and now they’re gone.  There is no point holding a vigil or preserving some mortgaged monument to who they once were.  For us either.  I got my degree in history but I’ve never been a fan of preserving things just so they don’t fade away.  What’s worth remembering will be remembered, the rest will dissolve into the ether one way or another.

Through these changes and my obsession with time travel stories I have come to learn that the only time that is important is right now.  I’m not referring to the pressure to make every moment count, because that is ridiculous.  If you are present as much as possible, then change isn’t so scary. If it’s thrust upon you, like a viral outbreak that upends your life, you can breathe through it.  If it is by design, and you are in control of the decisions that have to be made, you can breathe through it.

I don’t get along with people who refuse to change.  They are children in adult bodies.  I don’t know a more respectful way to put it. Those people who want things to stay the same or don’t want to talk about the future.  I don’t get it.  Life moves in one direction.  Forward.  I also hate stories with characters who refuse to change, adapt, or grow.  I feel like that was a trait of a hundred TV shows in the last thirty years.  Men who are afraid to commit.  People who wait too long to start a relationship.  I realize that writes want to stretch out the plot of a show, but I think that shows an unwillingness to change on their part, too!  There are plenty of things to talk about after the ‘will they/won’t they’ is over.  You just have to try it.

I get it.  Fear of the unknown. People would rather be with the familiar, even if it makes them miserable, then venture out into the spooky and scary unknown.  But its like learning to care for yourself. Eating better, exercising, learning about the world.  A healthy attitude toward change is part of growing up.  It’s one of those things that is always better when you’re on the other side of it.

One of the other things that could be up for a change is how I approach these blogs, and if I continue to do them at all.  They are merely workouts in between book projects, and I plan to use them when I have my own self-publishing writer storefront up and running.  It’s another change. I’ll give myself another few years and make a hard, dedicated run at selling more books.  I can use these blogs to reach out to readers.  Plus, they are fun to do. If nothing comes of it, and I’m in my fifties and I’m still making sixteen dollars a year as a writer and I’m pouring all my time into work that no one reads, I’ll close up shop.  It will be time for a change.  And I’ll be ready for it.

The Secret Evil of the Movie Montage

The 1980’s were the Golden Age of Montages.  It’s that cinematic device that’s used to quickly show the passage of time to bring the characters from one stage to another, mostly because film is expensive.  It’s also necessary because it would be a cheat in the movie not to see the character train, learn, build or accomplish something before bringing them to the next scene. Rocky III and Rocky IV have training for a fight, The Karate Kid learns karate, Rodney Dangerfield studies for an exam in Back To School.

You also have montages for the progression of a family from a couple to parents, a cop learning the job and gaining wisdom about her experiences, or the physical construction of a barn, a boat, a car, or something that will aid the characters in the third act.  Montages were so ubiquitous that they are expected, and some were stylized better than others.  The writing of a movie (and sometimes a TV show) was designed to have a montage in them to fit the story. 

In the internet age, we have videos shown in 10x speed to show the creation of a piece of art from start to finish.  You can see furniture restored or a cake baked from scratch in thirty seconds.  It’s convenient, it’s education and its entertaining.  But I think there is a lingering evil behind it. 

Montages exist to speed through the boring parts.  The reading, the sweaty labor, the day after day of waking up and sticking to a plan and pushing forward.  It all the shit you can’t put in a movie because it’s a story in compressed time and that crap is not entertaining at all.  It also gives the illusion through the camera’s eye that someone is watching these experiences.  Truth is, you’re often alone.  You have to run ten miles or stay up late and hit the books.  You have to clock in and out every day and deal with the same bullshit.  In fact, montages are a window to real life.  They’re the realest shit in a movie.

Movies show the idea and the last moment of desperation before the character reaches the goal.  The bulk of the effort of anything worth doing in life is 98% of all the work in between.  It’s hard and boring, and unrewarding and shitty.  Plus, you have no idea at all if that last scene will ever happen.  Montages are fun in movies because you know there will be a satisfying moment at the end.  A character will understand the journey and it will be worth the effort.  We all know life isn’t like that.  You hope it will be, but uncertainty and doubt hover every decision you make during the process.

It’s the tough stuff. The real work.  The stuff not a lot of people are willing to do.  Or, they are willing, but only because of a fanciful notion in their head planted by a montage.  It’ll be fun.  There will be a neat soundtrack playing behind all of my actions.  I’ll have the support of everyone around me.  It will be worth it.  Nope. No guarantees of any of that.  If they are plagued by montage thinking, they will quit when it stops being fun.

 But some people do it anyway. Movies can’t tell their stories.  It’s an insufficient medium.

Entertainment is so intertwined with our culture that it’s difficult to know what’s real or not, especially if you are young and just starting out in life.  Life isn’t the movies or TV, but you also don’t want it to be.  There are rewards in life that will never be reflected onscreen simply because they’re not cinematic or they take too long to understand.

You might be able to read it in a book, though.

Aw, Man. Am I Chasing Camp?

Camp, 1990's-era

(Before I get started, I’ve never liked titles with ‘Chasing’, Searching, “Finding’, ‘Saving’ or any of those present tense verbs in them. No analysis here.  I just think they suck.)

I drive all over Oregon and Washington for my job.  I’ve visited around twelve thousand homes and most of them are the same. Just like in your town.  But because of the area, there is a percentage of these homes in gorgeous areas that I can’t stop thinking about.  Now, I’m rarely amazed by the houses, but the locations are unbelievable.  Some are obviously out of our price range, but still lovely to visit.  Then there are those that could be an option for us as we sell our house, and I’ve started cataloging them in my brain.

I came across one this week.  In an area I’ll never consider, but the actual set up was beautiful.  Out in the country, rolling hills and trees.  The house was meh, and too big for us.  The woman who owned it said her husband was out back, which usually means a guy working in a barn, landscaping or working on a car in a garage.  But this guy wasn’t doing anything at all.  He sat in a chair, looking at the little pond in his backyard.  He was a retiree, sitting in a cheap chair in his backyard with only the sound of birds.  He was just…being there. That may bore the living shit out of you, but I was envious the moment I spotted him.

To silently just be. No one laying any responsibility on me.  No noise from neighbors.  I’m in the woods, but only a few minutes in the car from groceries or tacos.  I never knew that was what I wanted.  Or, have I wanted that all along?

In the early 1970’s, my grandfather bought land in the East Osceola State Forest in Upstate, New York. There was, and still is, nothing there.  Miniscule towns an hour northeast of Syracuse, where I was born.  The construction of the cabin, or ‘Camp’ as we called it, is not my story to tell. It was a small cabin with a steel barrel for a wood stove, an upstairs loft with beds, an eventual toilet that replaced an outhouse, a kitchen, and a back porch. It was put together with scraps and only the ingenuity of the family and friends that helped build it. I feel like half the story of the Mercurio’s surrounds Camp itself, and I’m not the person to tell it because most of the time I was there, I was in long, footy-pajamas.  But I remember the feeling of being there.  We moved to Florida in 1981 and I visited a view more times.  I even brought my Florida friends there to hang out.  The best part of Camp, as anyone would attest to, was the back porch.  Screened, with a solid wall of trees and the forest air to breathe in. You went out there when it rained, if it was freezing, or every night just to suck it all in.

I’d like to share a poignant moment that happened there.  I don’t have one.  There are also plenty of shitty ones I don’t want to share.  I can tell you it was a feeling, and it was my only access to that feeling. It just as well could have been any cabin in the woods.  I don’t know.  But Camp was my doorway to it.

I grew up in Orlando.  Spots of green here and there, but mostly a sprawled suburbia with concrete and traffic and construction.  I also…prefer suburban life.  I like access to quiet and also access to a city.  I’ve never lived in a rural area, and I want to be close to grocery stores, fire departments and the occasional dinner out with the Mrs. We’re definitely homebodies, but I like concerts and comedy shows and the diversity of people and ideas that cities usually have.  But something kept pulling me to green. 

In 2001, Amy and I visited her sister in Seattle.  We were there for ten days, including a visit to Oregon for a few.  I remember my first morning in the house in north Seattle, with a view of the Puget Sound.  I drank a strong coffee on a deck on an overcast day in May, and the breeze was chilly enough for me to need a blanket. That was it. That was all I needed. Daytona Beach could suck it.

I could put one right here, in the Mt. Hood National Forest, right?

Fifteen years ago, I moved to Oregon.  Oregon is wall-to-wall trees on this side of the Cascades, as most people know.  There’s one day of snow every other year or so, and the misty light rain of the wintertime.  I’ve found a comfortable place to live, and a blue state to boot, but have I just been recreating Camp all this time?  Have I been trying to recapture a feeling I had in a shitty childhood and make it my own as an adult?  Is this my Rosebud? It’s certainly possible. It’s only by luck that my wife has been along for the ride.  My kids like it here and any downsides haven’t really amounted to much at all. 

Most people create their environments, directly or indirectly, without even knowing it.  Dramatic people are comfortable with chaos.  People in motion prefer to be unattached.  Those bound by tradition don’t move much.  You might be something that you don’t realize.  I wanted fame and fortune with I was eighteen, but I didn’t chase it.  Why?  Maybe I didn’t want it after all.  My brain thought I needed something else.  It’s tough to imagine a life of peace with you’re young and stupid and you live in America.  That kind of life story doesn’t get a documentary.

I’ve written about my problems with self-judgment and I spend way too much picking apart my motivations and shortcomings.  Maybe I believe deep down that this is the answer.  Something about Camp brought me peace and I’m looking to manifest it again to bring me peace as an old fart. 

I’m getting close.

Closing the Book, Saying Goodbye, and Killing It

             This is a thoughtful piece; however I think it will have a ton of pop-culture references in it. Brace yourself.

             Hitting your forties is special.  You know you are mathematically and undeniably middle aged, and you know that you’ve probably passed the point in your life where you were the most virile and vital.  However, if you are a thinking person, you also acquire the ability to let shit go.  I think your forties are the proving years to see whether you can age gracefully or become a bitter, angry, sad asshole.

             I’ve felt this a lot lately, and a fun way to measure these events as you get older is to acknowledge the small endings you have in your daily life.  They start early.  The end of high school and college or the end of a job that you won’t soon forget.  There are friendships that fade away and breakups, too.  Another one is to acknowledge the ending of stories in your life.  Some people feel it when a favorite musician dies, and you know that you will never hear anything new from them ever again.  The same thing with actors, writers and filmmakers. Sue Grafton died before she finished her Z book.  (That must drive OCD people insane.)

             There have been a bunch of story endings for me in the last year.  Game of Thrones, Avengers, Star Wars, Mr. Robot, The Good Place… I think there are a few more, too.  It is bittersweet to see it end, but the feeling that comes after is so important, even when it’s just entertainment we should acknowledge it.  Endings are such a major part of life and a real teacher of how strong we are.  We need to have things so we will know that next morning the sun will rise, and we’ll be just fine.

             My kids aren’t kids anymore and now I’m the old guy that raised them.  My hair isn’t coming back. All the shit I like has been forgotten, trivialized, or banished to an oldies bin of culture.  I have hundreds of open-ended arguments in my head that will never be resolved.  I have a few dozen dreams that I know will never happen.  Clinging to them is painful.  It’s not the dreams’ fault.  It’s the clinging.

             I have had important people in my life that I will never see again, and for some it is a sure thing.  You have to let them go.  I do not light candles for departed loved ones.  If they truly meant something to you, there is no way you will ever forget them.  Behaving as if they are actually part of your life right now, today, is clinging, and clinging only hurts you.  Their memory can dissolve and become part of your blood flow, your conscience, your morality.  That is the best you can hope for as a memorial.  That way, when you think of them, what comes up first is how knowing them also benefitted you.  They have become inexorable from you.  To know who you are, is to know them, too.

             Killing your past was a theme in the last two epic space movies I watched in the theater.  This is a tough one.  Killing the past in totality is impossible and stupid. However, strategically targeting can be helpful.  If you approach it like a surgeon who removes a tumor, then I think you’re on the right path.  Those memories of screw-ups and evil deeds that you’ve atoned for but still plague you…kill ‘em.  Those truly devastating and embarrassing moments you remember that still make you sick to your stomach…kill ‘em.  Those shitty people who betrayed you or fucked you over…kill ‘em.  Well, not them, but they should spend a lot less time occupying brain space.  Learn the required lesson and close that book.  Trust me, they aren’t thinking about you.

             Doesn’t it seem that a significant part of this country can’t let go of things?  They cling to the good ol’ days, whatever they think they were, and they can’t stand the fact that deep down they know they aren’t ever coming back. Refusing to adapt and change goes against the basic tenets of nature.  No change means no growth.  No growth means… Well, it’s nothing good.

They aren’t even pining for a time or place, they just mourn the illusion of it.  Everything changes, people die, and nothing lasts forever. These are things we figured out eons ago yet there are millions of Americans that believe they are immune.  Time and civilization only move in one direction.  Forward.

Close the old books and say goodbye.  You’ll be okay.  I don’t have to promise this.  It happens billions of times a day.