THE SEASON OF THE HOME

People are always asking me: Hey, Jon Spruce, when you gonna settle down?

Yo, baby, it’s not your fault.  It’s not from lack of trying. 

But I got to do it my way…settling down without settling at all.

To be honest, I’m not even sure what settling down even means.

I guess I was absent the day they handed out the long list of society’s benchmarks.

Does it mean just coming home to a list of errands?  Does it mean spinning the chore wheel?

Does it mean just staying at home and saving the money and saving the gas and fidgeting with the thermostat while, out there beyond the front door, the snow is melting or the acorns are falling or the rivers are rising or the magnolia is budding?

I mean, you don’t want to give up a good parking spot, do you?

A few weeks ago, I got a good taste of settling down and I ended up stuck in a snuggie, addicted to bad TV, moss growing under my rump, asleep at the wheel.

But now I was on the outside, looking in.  You can’t say I didn’t try.

A lot of times, I think settling down means staying put.  It means people can make a good guess where you are, at any given moment, and usually be right. 

On the grid.  At the desk.  On hold.  Inside.

It means being home…which means choosing a house...buying roots, building equity and nurturing moss.

Buying a house?  It can’t be as hard as I think and it can’t be as monumental as they want me to believe.

I’m smart.  I can do things.  I can make an appointment with some paper-pushing banker.  I can fill out the forms, let some lending company go through my personal purchasing history, sign on the dotted line and then spend the next thirty years paying for my own front door.

That’s a walk in the park.

It’s knowing what I want, forevermore.  It’s settling.  That’s the killer.

Why?

Because, just like the trees, new ideas and new flowers blossom with every season…there’s always new branching to be done…there’s always new fruit to taste and there’s always old fruit dropping by the curbside…the colors are always changing.

What if…what if I buy that old ramshackle of a house?  What then?   I move my stuff in.  I change my address.  I fix her up.  I learn about water heaters and garbage disposals and septic tanks, if applicable.

I lay me some roots.

I hang up my hat.

But what if…what if I change my mind?  What if my mood swings?  What if my weather changes?

It’s bound to happen.

I mean, you can always leave.  You can always give up the interior occupation, sell the house and then go back to the reckless, heedless lifestyle of a tree-hunter. 

But not really.

You can always come back…sure…but you can’t come back all the way.

Trust me.  I know me better than myself.

There will come a night…an inevitable evening…when I am warm and settled in the confines of my own house…gently drowsing to the rhythms of some old adventure novel…and I will rise from my Lay-Z-Boy, startled by the sound of someone tapping, of someone gently rapping, at my city door.

I will swing the door open wide and there he’ll be…my old younger self…hat in hand…asking if Jon Spruce can come out and play.

BIRDBERRIES: THE DUCKS FLY MOON

In case you didn’t notice, it’s officially October.

 

We’re halfway through the first moon of autumn, the Ducks Fly Moon. 

Beware, citybillies.  This moon is a game changer.

According to the farmer’s almanac, at the beginning of this moon, the length of daylight is a little bit over twelve hours long.  Here in the middle of the moon, a day spans about eleven hours, thirty minutes long…and by the end, the sun will rise at 7:30am and set at 6:15pm, a mere ten hours, forty five minutes of precious, cold, cloudy daylight.

From here on out, the moon dominates the twenty-four hours…these drizzly days of October.

 

Looking at the almanac’s chart of sunrises and sunsets, we are losing one minute of sunlight per day every morning…and sometimes two minutes of sunlight every evening …the two bookends of night are slowly, mechanically closing in…no escape from October.

Take heed, citybillies.  This drastic change of daylight, these falling temperatures, these days turning into nights …this moon is a trigger.

It sets things in motion.

Out there…beyond the frosted pane…beyond the cozy confines of a warm blanket and a hot cup of cider…things are changing...things are moving just as fast as the day is retreating…spiders are crawling into the warm home, hiding in the basement, nesting under the bed…snakebite cases skyrocket…and in the kingdom of Plantae?

Things reverse.  The growing season stops…the kilter comes off…plants and trees now spend all their energy undressing for the winter.  They’re battening down the hatches.  You can notice it first in the colors.  Greens turn to reds and oranges, russets and yellows.

Well…not exactly.

The trees aren’t changing colors, really.  More precisely, they are losing colors.  Well, to be exact, they are losing one color…green.

Here’s what’s happening.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST: BLOCKBUSTER TREES

Contrary to popular belief, I have a lot more interests than just trees.

Okay, ladies?  I’m not just all about trees.

I got a lot of passions.  I got a lot of interests.  I’m smart.  I can do things.

My other passions?  I like my sports.  I like my cars.  My favorite car company?  Pontiac.  After all, the real Pontiac was an Ottawa chieftain from the Great Lakes who led an unsuccessful revolt against the British in 1763.  Hey, I like to do a lot of things.  Restaurants, bars, museums, art galleries, used bookstores?  Let’s go.  I read a lot of novels.  I especially like dark science fiction, hard-boiled crime stories and violent westerns.  I like going out.  I like fine California wine, good Pennsylvania canned beer and bourbon.  Ah, bourbon.  That’s how you say Kentucky in whiskey.

I’m also a movie buff.  I love the movies…and that’s why I am shocked – shocked – at the radical change that just happened with the newest Sight & Sound list of the greatest movies of all time. 

Every ten years, the British cinema magazine, Sight & Sound, mails the voting ballots to movie critics and filmmakers all around the world, asking them all the same question: What is the greatest movie of all time?

Since 1962, Citizen Kane has remained at the top of the list…until now. 

The newest greatest movie of all time?  Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological San Francisco thriller, Vertigo.

I never thought I’d see the day.

It reminds me of the famous Native American Zen story…the one where the Great Chief assembles all of Turtle Island’s wise men together in one place and demands, from all of them, that they solve this profound puzzle: invent a sentence that will be true and appropriate for all times.

Their final answer: And this too shall someday pass.

It's true.  The only constant is change.  Everything is fleeting, everything is temporal, nothing remains the same.  Down here in the mean streets of Philly, we say it like this: you can’t be king forever.

And so, in 2012, Citizen Kane slips down a notch to number two and Vertigo takes the coveted catbird seat at the top of the Sight & Sound greatest movies list.

It is a great movie, full of twists and turns…and I’m not just talking about the city streets of San Francisco where it was filmed.

My favorite part?  When Scottie, played by Jimmy Stewart, takes the blonde enigma Madeleine to the redwoods forest on a dark and gloomy afternoon.

This scene was actually filmed in the Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz.  During that pivotal scene, Scottie shows Madeleine the exhibit of a giant cross-section of a redwood and has this meaningful, puzzling exchange:

Scottie: What are you thinking?

Madeleine: Of all the people who’ve been born and have died while the trees went on living.

Scottie: Their true name is Sequoia sempervirens…‘always green, always living.’

Then, Madeleine points to the concentric rings in the wood and, speaking to the tree itself, says: Somewhere in here, I was born.  And there I died.  It was only a moment for you.  You took no notice.

Pure.  Movie.  Magic.

GREATEST TREES IN CINEMA HISTORY

People are always asking me: Jon Spruce, what are the five most famous trees in cinema history?