more normal than not

How many times have I watched this movie?

It would be fun to figure that out….kind of like playing with a “Where’s Waldo” book.

It would be that kind of fun.

Maybe it wouldn’t be all that much fun.

It wouldn’t be fun for me….and it wouldn’t be fun for you.

I rented a VCR to watch this movie.

That’s how much I wanted to see it.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

I have better options for watching Jeremiah Johnson now.

I am not really sure if you can even rent VCR’s now.

That would be a funny quest….go out and canvass the area trying to rent a VCR so that you could watch Jeremiah Johnson.

Anyway….I’ve watched this movie quite a number of times.

It’s one of my favorites so I don’t mind repeating the experience.

I watched it again last night.

And, even though I can recite most of the dialog by heart at this point, enjoyed the heck out of it.

This is a pretty old movie at this stage of the game.

1972 was a while ago.

Robert Redford was a pretty young man.

I was a really young man.

I watched this movie again last night….and then started thinking about another Robert Redford movie that I watched recently.

That movie was called “All is Lost”.

This time around, Robert Redford is in peril at sea after a mishap with a shipping container.

I watched this movie and thought, “Good grief, this is a slow movie.”

I don’t know what I expected…there’s almost no dialog…it’s just Robert Redford on a sinking sailboat, trying to save the boat and his life.

I was pretty bored sometimes while I was watching it.

I shouldn’t start movies when I’m so tired at the end of the day.

That’s when I can start a movie though…when the little kids are asleep and the house has gotten quieter.

That’s my movie time, if it’s going to happen.

By the time this movie was over I was wide awake.

This was a great movie….quiet….moving.

I don’t know why I demand that a movie grabs me from the start….I should be more patient than that.

There’s nothing that’s blatantly “heroic” about “Our Man”s (I think that’s what Robert Redford’s character is known as in the movie) efforts.

Not heroic like the Bruce Willis “yippeekayaye, mofo” stuff we’ve come to be used to.

It’s not “cartoon heroics”…just a normal, intelligent man trying to cope with a hard situation.

And, in the end, that’s what stayed with me.

No matter how bad things get, he just keeps plugging away….just keeps trying to come up with a way to survive.

I don’t think that I’ll make a habit of watching “All is Lost” like I do “Jeremiah Johnson”….but it’s a movie worth seeing….and I’ll probably watch it again at some point.

I don’t know what is so appealing about these quiet stories of survival to me.

These quiet, normal men reminded me of something that I could relate to.

But… what?!

Life?

Maybe it was….life.

 

There aren’t two “Chasing Mavericks” movies.

You can’t make a sequel to a movie like that.

The story doesn’t support a sequel.

I wish that it did…..

I wrote a quick post a while back when I was starting this blog….about the movie.

I guess that surfing must be my “temporary Idaho”…

It seems like something good to steer towards when the morning comes too soon and my head is fuzzy and I can’t imagine what to write about at 5:30.

It’s a good “go-to” blog topic…along with Idaho, living out of a van, living in the country, traveling across the country while living in a van, watching videos about people living out of vans while they travel the coast surfing….etc.

I guess there’s always something to write about.

You don’t travel the country with a family of 6 in a van.

Do you?

Maybe a big van?

We have one bathroom and seem to get along OK.

It’s what we know…it’s what we cope with.

Maybe a big funhog van….maybe pulling a pop-up camper?

Planning my escape…old horse in a small corral, running in circles and occasionally bumping the fence, watching the sun go down and the moon come up, night after night dreaming of a bunch of dunes that he could be running on….

just another wild-eyed horse plotting his escape.

Jenny says that the only other Norwegian she knew growing up took off for Alaska with his “secret fund” and never looked back…just left his family and never looked back.

That dude gives Norwegians a bad name.

I think that she watches which direction I head when I go out the door sometimes.

I’m not one of the bad Norwegians, though…I stick around.

I love my family.

Looking over the fence to the greenest grass that I’ve ever seen….just feet away…so reachable….

Wait…that’s a real cliché, isn’t it?

That “green grass” stuff?

That’s been said before with great consistency….the grass is greener when you can’t get to it…

Whoopedeedoo…”bloom where you’re planted”.

Bloom somewhere.

Here‘s as good a place as any to bloom.

I guess that there’s two ways to look at this “situation”….

1.  I could look at it in a way that makes me sad for what I’m not experiencing. Knowing about the “big world”….and not getting to get out and see more of it….always comparing the “good that is” to the “better” that I imagine…destroying myself from the inside out with a self-created “need” to travel and see things out in the world…..

or….

2. Loving the fact that I know a little about “what’s out there”….and that we’ve raised children who like to see the world…or at least the little chunks of it that we’ve been able to travel so far…and having the maturity and drive to be patient and know that the world, for the most part, is going to be there for us when we get a chance to see more of it.

Meandering.

Really focused meandering.

I can handle “really focused meandering”.

I loved this movie…no, no past tense….love…

I haven’t seen it in a while.

“Big Wednesday”….

I have a “Big Monday” going on right now.

Something is crashing on my head.

My eyes are blurry…and I’m in a hurry.

I underslept and I’m late again…or I feel late…or something.

Maybe I’m OK?

I don’t really know.

I CAN’T KNOW!!

I’m going to go downstairs and make some coffee….wait for me…I’ll be right back….

OK….I started the coffee.

I couldn’t make you wait for it to finish…it’d take too long…so I came back early.

I couldn’t make you wait.

This movie….”Big Wednesday”…is a good one.

At one point in my life, I worked in a cubicle and I used to listen to the audio track from the movie on my Walkman….had pictures of surfing pinned to my cubicle wall.

I wanted to stand up on a wave….be out in the ocean.

I guess that it was another example of wanting to be “away”.

I wanted to be doing something different than what I was doing.

Proof-reading the yellow pages before they went to be printed was pretty mind-numbingly boring.

It was boring even if I listened to guys catch giant waves.

I couldn’t run away fast enough…the boring would track me down and grab my neck like a pouncing tiger….gnaw on me and spit me out like a hunk of bored sour meat.

They say that alcohol kills brain cells but I wonder how many we kill doing stupid but necessary jobs?

A man’s got to have some money, though.

We do what we have to do to survive.

Anyway….I’ve heard it said that being bored is the sign of a weak personality….so, truth be told….I’m never bored, no matter how hard something big tries to throw me to the ground and chew on my bored carcass.

Anyway…it’s Monday.

That’s the start….it’s where it all begins.

I’ll probably find another book about living out in the woods on pennies a day and destroy myself for being happy slogging around doing what I do.

The funny thing about a lot of those books is that they were written in the 40’s and never made it to many reprintings….so I’m reading something that’s really out-dated and thinking, in my naïve, hopeful way, that, “Hey!!! I could do that!! Live in the woods on pennies a day!!” ….even though, adjusted for inflation, it’s probably something like “slightly less that a hundred dollars a day” now.

Nobody in my family is really excited about the whole “pennies a day” thing, anyway.

I’m no hermit…

So, in the movie these three guys grow up together and surfing is a strong bond for them.

Out in the sun and the waves, they surf.

Friends surfing….it looked like a good thing.

It would be a good thing.

Monday is a weird marker.

It’s not something bad, really…it’s just the feeling that it gives me in the pit of my stomach that I have to be able to gently fight.

I need to remember what I imagine it must feel like to stand on top of a big wave.

I need to imagine a big wave on my “Big Monday”.

When I was 9, my parents called me in from playing outside on a hot San Jose night to watch the men land on the moon.

I sat and watched them land….and then jump out of the LEM…and walk on the moon.

I watched Neil Armstrong make his “one giant leap” comment.

I watched all this with as much amazement as a 9-year-old could sustain….and then I got outside again as fast as I could to run and throw dirt clods.

I knew it was a big deal, even then…but I had work to do outside.

I had a life.

Last night…and most of the day….I listened to or watched shows commemorating the D-Day invasion.

This year marked 70 years since our armed forces landed on the beaches of France to battle the Nazis.

I can’t relate to that, really.

I was 15 when the Vietnam War ended, and coming out of the Vietnam War period, the military wasn’t a popular option as a career for a young man, so I never even thought about serving my country.

I never served…or was asked to serve.

How could I relate to what these men had experienced?

Watching the shows last night, though, I related.

Watching these older fellows talk about their experiences made me miss my own father.

They were so straight forward and just seemed like good people.

Of course, they were the ones they let on TV.

But they all seemed like good guys.

They made me wish that I was up in Washington at the Memorial…having a good visit and shaking some hands….thanking them for their service.

I don’t have a real connection to what these men did during D-Day….because I don’t have to have a connection.

It’s like when a parent always fills your needs…and you never have to understand what any of the things they did to make that happen cost them.

You just know that your needs are filled…and that’s as far as it needs to go.

That’s as far as you take it.

“Gratitude” takes too much time, sometimes….especially when you want to do the adult equivalent of running outside to throw dirt clods.

Watching these men made me realize that I’m not required to understand what they did…because they were successful at “what they did”.

I can take it for granted because I’m still free…and can take it for granted.

“Sacrifice” on that scale isn’t on my radar.

I doubt that many of these men who fought for us will still be with us when the next anniversary of D-Day comes around.

They were in their 20’s when they were at war….they’re in their 90’s now.

I doubt that many will still be here next time we honor what they did.

I’m glad I paid attention to them…at least for a little while.

I still can’t relate to what they did.

None of it is close to anything that I’ve ever experienced.

I should thank them for that if I ever get the chance.

“Let Them In” David Wilcox

We watch these shows on TV about people buying houses.

That’s pretty weird, when I think of it.

Sort of voyeuristic or something.

Why should I care what somebody else is doing?

The thing about these shows is that so often it’s a young couple who are looking for their first home….and somehow, they have a budget of 400,000 dollars.

That’s a lot of money.

How does that happen?

I watched one last night where the woman was a food blogger.

She must have a heck of a blog.

I need to bake some cupcakes, too….so that I can get that rich.

Anyway, they have all this money…and they’re looking for a house.

Not just any house, either…usually it needs the “granite and stainless”….and it needs to be big.

These houses that this particular couple were looking at were in Austin….and most were way over 2500 square feet…with big vaulted ceilings and huge open floor plans.

Huge houses for a young (childless) couple just starting out.

That’s insane…but, somehow, not uncommon.

Why do we need these big houses?

If we have a bunch of kids…like the Duggars….it would make sense.

But two people don’t need a giant house.

I guess that I’m sort of a hypocrite, though. I have so much stuff….so many books…that we could use a big house….or a good, cheap storage facility.

So I guess that I’m sort of a hypocrite.

It’s the stuff…not the life…that demands a big house.

I am amazed when I see these people with the idea that they need all this room…with it’s additional heating and cooling issues….upkeep issues….look for these giant houses.

IT’S CRAZY, MAN!!!

Then…when they find the giant house…some of them complain that they’ll have to buy a bunch of furniture to fill it with.

They orientate their needs to fit the big purchase.

And this one couple could do it all with the proceeds from a food blog.

That is amazing.

I could cook some crappy looking cupcakes…take a picture of them on a nice granite counter top….and then really clean up.

I didn’t know it could be so profitable.

I have been barking up a lot of wrong trees.

I should concentrate on baking some crappy looking cupcakes.

Here’s a couple of videos about tiny houses.

Jenny says that “editing” is the new skill in the coming years.

If you can edit your life down to the point where the tiny home is the good option….pare it all down….simplify, simplify, simplify…that would be pretty great.

Pretty great…and pretty hard.

Pretty great….and pretty elegant.

Google “tiny house” or get on YouTube and check out all the videos….check out Lloyd Kahn’s website …there is a lot of information out there on tiny homes.

There is so much in the world that’s more interesting than “stainless steel and granite”.

You don’t need a giant house.

I don’t want to bake a cupcake so that I can take a picture of it.

I just want to eat it.

Every bit of it.