In the (1991) movie Fried Green Tomatoes Kathy Bates plays a middle age woman (Evelyn) whose husband has lost interest in her. She is struggling to find purpose in her life and a sense of identity. By chance she encounters the eighty-something (Ninny) Jessica Tandy in a nursing home and the two of them join forces with a wonderful story. It is a powerful, feel good movie that speaks to something important; not the same message for everyone but it will touch you none the less. If you have seen it already, see it again.
There is a scene where Evelyn has been grocery shopping and is in the market parking lot. Reacting to one of many disappointments, she can’t shake her frustration with having no control over her life. Just when it seems things cannot get worse, the bag tears, her groceries spill out on the ground and she stands there not knowing what to do. I got a déjà vu vibe.
Starting a written piece is much like Evelyn going to pick up bread and eggs at the A&P. As I start browsing thru characters and plot, framing story has a lot in common with her shopping list, simple and short. But along the way she notices things that should have been on the list and adds them to her cart. By the time she gets out to her car her arms are full and any slip or distraction would bring on a collapse that cannot be undone. If I could keep to my short, simple story it wouldn’t be such a task. But at this point in my life I am drawn to the big, complicated stories. The Human Condition; why do we do like we do? That seems simple enough but if you look close enough, nothing is simple. John Muir (one of my heroes) said; “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
When I want to examine a narrow aspect of the human experience it is a short reach from me to Evelyn in the parking lot. By the time I get a thousand words into my work it overloads and starts coming down like a house of cards. My shopping bags get so full of backstory and cause-effect other-story that I can’t keep it together all the way to the parking lot. I find myself elbow to elbow with a frustrated lady and her groceries in a heap on the ground.
Without going down that Rabbit Hole I’m not afraid to dance around it. I do not soft-pedal or fantasize either my beliefs and convictions or how I got to be this way. I don’t really know how I got to be who I am but here I am just the same. My growing up was so 20th century, blue collar, White, Protestant, Male stereotype that there were not many weighty decisions for me to consider. One’s culture is incredibly difficult to resist and I was a passively compliant youngster. Even though I stumbled with school work and my academic skills were severely limited, I must have had a streak of native curiosity. Never bored, I always managed with what I had and it never dampened my imagination.
So when I did challenge my culture I was too old and independent to be intimidated or dissuaded. Rejecting traditional myth (religion & politics) was not traumatic, only a series of profound disappointments. What I had trusted for so long was nor more real than an episode on a TV sitcom. I’ve had plenty of time to learn about how Homo sapiens have maintained and expanded their niche here on Earth. I have confidence in qualified, secular experts who make it their life’s work. A large part of that open ended endeavor has been their collective willingness to be proven wrong, to reexamine, correct and update the current knowledge base. The underlying principle is that progress is punctuated with human error and dead ends. When we know better we update our findings and communicate the results.
A glitch in human protocol is that for millennia, civilization has been seduced by wannabe wisdom and persuasive propaganda. Even now, people still prefer what is perceived to be indisputable, universal truths. (“We want to know what will be true forever and we want to know right now.”) Nobody questioned myth based metaphors in a time when the naked eye and sense of touch were all you had to separate truth from fiction. The gap between reliable scientific enlightenment and the comfort of faith based tradition has expanded faster than the human animal has been able to accommodate it. Humans still struggle with the brain’s internal duality. We still act instinctively on emotional impulse long before the logical part of the brain can do the math. The old system was sufficient for hunter gatherer clans and the dangers they faced but that was then and this is now (spears close up vs far away nuclear weapons).
There I’ve done it. Here we are, Evelyn and I are standing in the parking lot with our arms full and no place to turn. Kathy Bates got paid and moved on to her next movie. My story is like a loop film, fluttering in the projector like a WW2 news reel. But I know how it began and where it lost its legs. So if I want to keep shaking this tree I best delete the whole thing and start over.
There is a scene where Evelyn has been grocery shopping and is in the market parking lot. Reacting to one of many disappointments, she can’t shake her frustration with having no control over her life. Just when it seems things cannot get worse, the bag tears, her groceries spill out on the ground and she stands there not knowing what to do. I got a déjà vu vibe.
Starting a written piece is much like Evelyn going to pick up bread and eggs at the A&P. As I start browsing thru characters and plot, framing story has a lot in common with her shopping list, simple and short. But along the way she notices things that should have been on the list and adds them to her cart. By the time she gets out to her car her arms are full and any slip or distraction would bring on a collapse that cannot be undone. If I could keep to my short, simple story it wouldn’t be such a task. But at this point in my life I am drawn to the big, complicated stories. The Human Condition; why do we do like we do? That seems simple enough but if you look close enough, nothing is simple. John Muir (one of my heroes) said; “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
When I want to examine a narrow aspect of the human experience it is a short reach from me to Evelyn in the parking lot. By the time I get a thousand words into my work it overloads and starts coming down like a house of cards. My shopping bags get so full of backstory and cause-effect other-story that I can’t keep it together all the way to the parking lot. I find myself elbow to elbow with a frustrated lady and her groceries in a heap on the ground.
Without going down that Rabbit Hole I’m not afraid to dance around it. I do not soft-pedal or fantasize either my beliefs and convictions or how I got to be this way. I don’t really know how I got to be who I am but here I am just the same. My growing up was so 20th century, blue collar, White, Protestant, Male stereotype that there were not many weighty decisions for me to consider. One’s culture is incredibly difficult to resist and I was a passively compliant youngster. Even though I stumbled with school work and my academic skills were severely limited, I must have had a streak of native curiosity. Never bored, I always managed with what I had and it never dampened my imagination.
So when I did challenge my culture I was too old and independent to be intimidated or dissuaded. Rejecting traditional myth (religion & politics) was not traumatic, only a series of profound disappointments. What I had trusted for so long was nor more real than an episode on a TV sitcom. I’ve had plenty of time to learn about how Homo sapiens have maintained and expanded their niche here on Earth. I have confidence in qualified, secular experts who make it their life’s work. A large part of that open ended endeavor has been their collective willingness to be proven wrong, to reexamine, correct and update the current knowledge base. The underlying principle is that progress is punctuated with human error and dead ends. When we know better we update our findings and communicate the results.
A glitch in human protocol is that for millennia, civilization has been seduced by wannabe wisdom and persuasive propaganda. Even now, people still prefer what is perceived to be indisputable, universal truths. (“We want to know what will be true forever and we want to know right now.”) Nobody questioned myth based metaphors in a time when the naked eye and sense of touch were all you had to separate truth from fiction. The gap between reliable scientific enlightenment and the comfort of faith based tradition has expanded faster than the human animal has been able to accommodate it. Humans still struggle with the brain’s internal duality. We still act instinctively on emotional impulse long before the logical part of the brain can do the math. The old system was sufficient for hunter gatherer clans and the dangers they faced but that was then and this is now (spears close up vs far away nuclear weapons).
There I’ve done it. Here we are, Evelyn and I are standing in the parking lot with our arms full and no place to turn. Kathy Bates got paid and moved on to her next movie. My story is like a loop film, fluttering in the projector like a WW2 news reel. But I know how it began and where it lost its legs. So if I want to keep shaking this tree I best delete the whole thing and start over.
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