Posts Tagged ‘movies’
From Nowhere
Luckily, I don’t bet on my sports fan hunches. I didn’t expect the Gopher football team to snatch the victory in their game Saturday afternoon. I didn’t expect the Blue Jays to lose Game 7 of the World Series. I firmly doubted the Vikings were going to get the better of Detroit yesterday.
I was not surprised that the order to once again change the clocks back an hour to Standard Time would disorient activities associated with my sleep, the feeding times for animals, and bedtime for Asher. It seems to me that an agreement will never be reached to settle on a year-round, consistent time rule in the USA.
Humans are so intelligent, we should leave the clocks alone and change the hours of our activities if there is a need to do things only when it is light outside. Another option would be to put a big mirror out on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to reflect sunlight on our population centers for the hours when natural daylight is shorter than our lifestyles demand.
We had some fine-looking moonlight glowing through the clouds last night after the hour-earlier sunset had transpired.
Cyndie and I spent the middle of the day yesterday seeing Jeremy Allen White’s impersonation of Bruce Springsteen in the movie “Deliver Me from Nowhere.” I went in with little knowledge of the storyline and came out much better informed about the Boss’s struggle with depression in the heyday of his early success.
It was a powerful depiction of how the weight of childhood stress can become too much to carry as adults if never addressed.
A lot of improved health can be achieved when seeking help from professionals sooner in our lives. I sure wish I had recognized my condition a lot earlier than I did.
Having successfully treated my depression has helped me immensely to cope with common stresses, like twice-a-year clock changes, for example. I might whine about it, but it doesn’t push me into the dark world of dysfunctional thinking that was a hallmark of my experiences.
Being delivered from nowhere is a precious thing, indeed.
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Coincidental Convergence
It started while Cyndie was away for a week in southern California. I entertained myself watching movies that she wouldn’t want to see. As I moved into the genre of war movies, I ended up progressing from WWII conflicts to the Vietnam War. By coincidence, I noticed a documentary series on AppleTV+ narrated by Ethan Hawke called “Vietnam: The War That Changed America.”
It is a fascinating telling by people who were there, on both sides of the conflict, with added context of what was going on at home with the citizenry and political leadership. It is much more than a Hollywood recreation of what happened, but it tends to validate plenty of the acted scenes in the movies I had been watching just days before.
As a palate cleanser, when Cyndie got home, I offered her some episodes of another AppleTV+ series: “1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything.” I hadn’t planned the synchronicity, but I quickly realized I was watching footage of the same period of history in each of the shows.
Saturday night, my brother recommended the 2023 documentary movie, “What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat, & Tears?” I watched it yesterday and found myself once again immersed in events from the same 1970s era as the previous two documentaries.
It was entirely unintentional but something of a reward. Each one served to add depth to the others.
The impression these all made on me provided a helpful reference for the consternation over the current situation in this country. Being taken back to points in history when people felt the world was teetering on the brink of nuclear obliteration or when public opinion was dramatically split between supporting a war against communism and demands that we bring our soldiers home.
The norms of oppression of minorities and women were being threatened by civil rights and equal rights marches. The youth were threatening almost all of the norms of their parents’ generation. Over and over, people perceived the disruptions as potentially disastrous to society, yet somehow we’ve endured and, in a few ways, even made progress.
It won’t be without some distress and many challenges, but based on how we’ve come through the difficulties this country has faced in the past, we may survive the current absurdities underway and eventually recover some semblance of political sanity.
Think about what today’s weirdness will look like in documentaries that might get made in 2075. That is, if historical documentaries are allowed in the future Christian Communist States of America. In 50 years, how much more money will the top 1% have amassed at the expense of the rest of the world?
That’s not a serious query. Fifty years out is too far for me to imagine. My focus is more like a year and a half from now with the hope that I still get to vote on who I want to represent me in our government.
Spoiler alert: Blood, Sweat, & Tears got forced into a no-win deal by the Nixon administration. That’s what the hell happened.
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Two Wolves
Last week, Cyndie and I squeaked in time after a hard day’s work to watch the Disney movie “Tomorrowland” (2015) that arrived in the mail on our Netflix subscription. We liked it a lot. It includes significant references to the popular teaching legend about two wolves, which highlights the importance of how our thinking influences our lives.
We have been repeating variations of the punchline with noticeable frequency in the days since.
A simple synopsis taken from the movie:
Casey Newton: “There are two wolves” … You told me this story my entire life, and now I’m telling you: There are two wolves and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair, the other is light and hope. Which wolf wins?
Eddie Newton: Whichever one you feed.
This resonates for me, because it reflects my direct experience from my years of chronic depression through the ensuing years following wonderfully successful treatment. I learned to feed the good wolf instead of the bad one.
This recent focus on the two wolves legend has renewed my attention to how often I still automatically default to a negative perspective, despite my desire and intentions to do otherwise.
I stepped in the house at the end of a long, strenuous day of laboring on our property and Cyndie checked in with me, commenting on the vast number of things we accomplished. Without missing a beat, my response grabbed the equally vast number of tasks that remain in need of attention.
Luckily, that default response no longer goes unnoticed by me. I caught myself and admitted I was feeding the wrong wolf.
It’s as if I feel the cheery perspective of the state of things requires a counterbalance to keep it from being a false representation of reality. But, thinking about it, I could see that no matter how I chose to frame it, either mental perspective did not physically change how many projects we did or didn’t complete that day.
The reality of whether the grass needs mowing or downed branches need to be turned into piles of wood chips does not change based on how I assess our achievements of the day.
So why not feed the good wolf?
In life’s ongoing battle between darkness and despair, and the alternative of light and hope, which one should we be feeding? I vote for light, hope, love, peace, compassion, understanding, and even more love.
Thank you, Tomorrowland, for sowing the seeds.
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Shared Treats
Cyndie and I have been on a bit of a movie binge lately, cramming to see movies and actors nominated (and winning) for this year’s awards season. During the week, squeezing in a movie after dinner tends to leave Delilah feeling a bit neglected by the end of a flick.
Sometimes, she takes it out on Pequenita, unloading oodles of pent-up energy on the poor little feline. Of course, in very cat-like behavior, ‘Nita doesn’t hesitate to bait the over-zealous dog into stirring up more trouble than she bargained for.
Even though the two house-pets are sole animal companions indoors, their interactions tend to give off a strong aura of faux friendship. Frenemies might be an appropriate description of their relationship.
It can appear to be cute when large Delilah prances over and tentatively sniffs at teeny ‘Nita. The stoic cat looks like she is giving great effort to tolerate the attention, especially when Delilah suddenly unleashes a quick tongue-drag across Pequenita’s back. I get a little grossed out when I offer the cat a scratch on her back and find it’s wet.
The two of them have one venture where they cooperate well with each other, putting their usual antics on hold for brief moments. They meet in the kitchen and bat their eyelashes at Cyndie until she gives in and offers up some kitty treats. They are Delilah’s favorite.
The exercise of shared cat treats started way back when we were first trying to acclimate dog and cat to each other. The first positions were spread far apart, but each subsequent treat was placed closer and closer until they eventually grew comfortable eating side by side.
Cyndie and I have seen 5 of the 9 movies nominated for this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture. I think Pequenita will be happy to have us soon complete the last 4 and get back to having the time to entertain Delilah for a few more hours each evening.
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See Ya
We’ll see ya later, September. It was nice knowin’ ya! Somehow, when I blinked, the whole month of September slipped past me. How can it be the last day of September already? I must be having fun, because time sure is flying.
I definitely had fun last night. Since I didn’t drive all the way home after working extra long at the day-job, I had the opportunity to take in a movie on the big screen before heading to Cyndie’s parents’ house to sleep. It’s been a long time since I was in a movie theater, and this one had been recently renovated, making the experience something special.
When I asked to purchase a ticket, the gentleman asked me what seat I wanted. He had a map of available seats on a monitor, from which I was to make my selection. I’ve never had to do that before. It was kind of strange. It was like picking a seat on a plane when purchasing a ticket to fly, which is becoming standard practice, but for some reason the standard didn’t translate in my head when it comes to movie theaters.
They boasted that one of the obvious advantages was the ability to buy your ticket in advance and show up right at the time of the movie. Your preferred seat would be open and waiting for you.
The reserved seat was just the beginning of the fun. The real wow-factor was when I stepped into the theater and discovered the seats were like giant leather Lazy-Boy recliners, with built-in cup holders.
The only things missing were a little lap blanket and maybe a dog or cat to snuggle with during the feature presentation.
With the month of October perched to begin tomorrow, that lap blanket idea has some merit, if you ask me.
For the record, I saw the latest Mission Impossible movie, which I found perfectly entertaining, but little more than that. Rather typical fare, which is not a knock against it. I didn’t actually expect it to be something beyond what fans of the Mission Impossible series want.
Probably the best part for me was being introduced to the beautiful face of Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson. That definitely added to the fun quotient.
Hopefully, her movie acting career will hang around a lot longer than the months of the year seem to. Seriously, September is closing out today. The best month of the year, gone, just like that. What a shame it has to end.
See ya later, September.
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Relative Something 