not where I came in

When I was a boy going to the movies at the Ritz Theatre, it was not unusual, common in fact, for people to get up and leave halfway through or in one part of the movie or another. It wasn’t a protest or an emergency or boredom, but simply “This is where I came in” in a day when the entire film, newsreel, previews, cartoon, and main feature, ran continuously over and over and over from opening to closing, and you left when you realized it was repeating, you had seen this part, this was where you came in.

Movie theaters aren’t like that now. They turn the lights down, they run a threat to throw you out if your cellphone rings, run a stupid popcorn and soda ad, run loud obnoxious previews, run the main feature, then the lights come up, the place empties out and closes down for a while until people start trickling in for the next showing.

“This is where I came in” no longer has any meaning.

Yesterday, Monday I thought to get away with claiming a sermon post for a blogpost, but it was a goof up for which no apology regardless. Do I sometimes regret starting the blog? no, because it’s my mental and slightly emotional exercise, muse, reflection and occasional sound-off equivalent of Linda’s crossword puzzles that she seems to have been too busy to fool with for about three weeks now. How I do sometimes feel is reflected in Barbara Crafton’s shift of her own daily post from “The Almost Daily eMO from the Geranium Farm” to what I read from her over this past weekend, “The Increasingly Rare eMO from the Geranium Farm” as she evidently sinks aging into the waning realities of retirement, interests, energy, drive, life and, perhaps, self. Simply, at times it seems more important to watch the pelicans diving for mullet just below my 7H porch than to snap a pic of it, write about it and press publish into empty ether to tell Anonymous Reader about it. For another metaphor, when Robert and I started walking, what, four or five years ago, we were vigorously all over the Cove, uptown, and enthusiastic; whereas yesterday, Monday morning my heart sang out when the phone rang at 5:44, I answered Hi Robert, he said Carroll it’s pouring rain over here, I said hard driving rain here too Robert see you Friday. I need to start reminding myself, I’m not seventy-five anymore. Or even eighty. Somehow crossing my last birthday made a difference and it was more fun reversing to 18 than to 28. After a three and a half hour Monday afternoon nap, though, following an exhausting long weekend, Linda and I did go for a Monday walk around the park below. Our vow is to do that Monday, Wednesday, Friday regardless. Park if clear, Garage if foul. Birthday Resolution.

Uncle Bubba is not the only one going off crotchety, America and the world too when the reportable news is of a president versus a gold star family publicly stirring a squabble that devolves into a political back and forth about what originated as a courtesy sympathy call. Or some WH bobbing head tries to shame the press for daring to criticize a four-star general. This is not where I came in and I don’t want to get along with any of them or with you.

My politics, religion and social convictions are so different from yours that I not only don’t want to read or listen to your rubbish, much less watch it on TV, I don’t want to understand you, I’m not the least bit interested in finding mutual ground, meeting in the middle, or overcoming this bitter division in order to unite for national unity, to be unified with you my fellow American. You come my way or we remain divided. I do understand America and Americans: opposite me are those whose views are so evil, wrong, greedy and selfish that my stance is contempt drifting toward malice and I have no desire to make peace with. Your religion, politics and social ethic that I must be like you may have started with the XnRt moving viciously into the politics of everyone should believe as I do and if you don’t believe what I believe you have to live the life of it anyway because I have the majority at 50 to 49 and I’m making it the law and the constitution. I do not care where you are, my interest is not to win you over, but to win over you.

This isn’t where I came in. I would wait and see if there’s a happy ending but it’s too long from eighty-two to the end of the movie.

DThos+

pics from a favorite movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off