Life Moves Pretty Fast

I had a birthday a few days ago.

I know, I know, hold your applause. I'm the kind of person who treats birthdays the way most people treat jury duty: an obligation to be endured quietly, preferably while keeping my head down and hoping no one in the building notices.

"You do realize you're required to acknowledge your own existence at least once a year," Amy informed me. "It's practically the law."

"It's not the law. I looked it up."

"It should be, Cowboy. You spent your birthday morning organizing a junk drawer. That's not a celebration, that's a cry for help with extra steps."

She's not entirely wrong; the older I get, the more birthdays come bundled with a little melancholy I didn't order. Names and faces and places that used to be part of the celebration and aren't anymore, for one reason or another. That part doesn't get easier. I don't think it's supposed to.

But here's the thing about The Circular Journey; we rarely arrive where we set out for, and yet somehow that detour usually delivers something worth keeping. This year, in the middle of all that birthday fog, I once again found my way back to the same place I always do: an '80s movie that has spent forty years refusing to let me feel sorry for myself for very long.

Enter Ferris

On June 11, 1986, John Hughes handed the world a popular high school senior who fakes being sick to skip school, and in doing so gave several generations of otherwise responsible adults a permanent excuse to romanticize truancy. Ferris Bueller's Day Off hasn't lost an ounce of its style in the forty years since, which is more than I can say for my own '80s wardrobe choices.

"You wore parachute pants," Amy reminded me, unhelpfully.

“They were bat-wing pants.”

“They were parachute pants with a gecko-design all over.”

“Amy, we agreed not to talk about that.”

“I agreed to nothing, Bubba.”

Matthew Broderick doesn't just play Ferris Bueller;  he is Ferris Bueller, so thoroughly that it's followed him through his entire career, the way a really good nickname follows you home from summer camp. 

I know something about that. My childhood nickname was ‘Smo.’ My best friend’s father, called me Cimolio after an outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. My friend shortened it to Smo.  

“The baseball player’s name was Gino Cimoli,” Amy corrected. “You friends spelled it with an ’S’ and then added an ‘O’ to the end.”

“Whatever, Amy! I only brought it up because my friend and his father are no longer around and no one calles me Smo anymore.”

From the moment Ferris talks his parents into a sick day, Broderick breaks the fourth wall, looks the audience dead in the eye, and invites us along for the ride. As the school secretary puts it: Oh, he’s very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads—they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.

Guys want to be him. Girls want to be with him. I, personally, just wanted his ability to talk his way out of anything, a skill that would have served me well approximately every time I've tried to sneak onto a film set.

Ferris can't have a day off alone, of course, nobody worth knowing does. He recruits his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) and his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck), commandeers Cameron's father's Ferrari, and the three of them descend on Chicago: the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, the Art Institute, and in what might be the single best scene in '80s cinema, a parade float, a rendition of Twist and Shout, and an entire city that stops what it's doing to dance along.

Why It Still Works

When I first saw this movie, I identified with Ferris, the kid clawing to hold onto his freedom before adulthood swallowed it whole. Watching it now, older and considerably more junk-drawer-organized, it's Cameron who gets to me. Ferris doesn't just want a fun day for himself; he wants to hand his best friend a little confidence, a little proof that he's worth more than his father's approval. That's the version of the story that ages with you.

The film's two “villains," Ferris's sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) and dean of students Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) spend the whole movie trying to catch him and never quite manage it, which feels less like a plot hole and more like a promise: some people are just going to have a good day no matter what you throw at them. 

The Line That Still Lands

That famous line early in the film hits differently on a birthday than it does on a random Tuesday:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I've spent my recent birthday thinking about the people and places that used to move alongside me and don't anymore, and I'm not going to pretend a movie fixes it. But it does remind me to stop and look around at what and who is still here with me. And most years, that's enough to turn the day around.

"So," Amy said, "are we throwing you a party next year, or are we going back to the junk drawer?"

"Ask me again in 364 days."

"I'm setting a reminder, Biscuit Brain. You're not getting out of this that easily."

“I never get out easily, Princess. It’s not in my nature.”

The Summer I Turned Lazy (TSITL)

Summer is winding down here in Wilmington, and I need to talk to you about something. Sit down. Get comfortable. If you've got a friendly barista nearby, now's the time for a pistachio latte. 

By every measure I can find, this has been the biggest film season this town has seen since I've lived here, and not some scattershot pile of small productions, either. Three genuine heavyweights.

Season two of RJ Decker, ABC's 1980s South Florida crime series based on Carl Hiaasen's Double Whammy, is wrapping up as you read this. 

A brand-new Disney+ pilot is shooting under the working title Saltwater, about a teenage girl who discovers her mother was a mermaid and must navigate first love and a secret half-mermaid identity in one very complicated summer. 

And then there's the big one: the Amazon feature film of The Summer I Turned Pretty, written and directed by creator Jenny Han herself, closing the shops on Cousins Beach for good and sending the whole beloved series off beyond the horizon. 

Given that the TSITP movie is the last chance anyone gets to watch Cousins Beach magic being made, you'd think I'd have moved heaven and earth to get footage. Well, I did move some earth, but only because I got lost driving through a swamp. 

Still, you’d think I would have a hard drive groaning under the weight of glorious behind-the-scenes b-roll from all three. 

I do not. I have one still photo. Four people in a boat, leaving the Yacht Basin Marina in Southport, and they may not have been connected with the movie at all. 

What I have, in staggering abundance, is a summer's worth of excuses, which I will now present with all the pageantry they don't deserve. 

Exhibit A: Savannah 
Back in late spring, Ms. Wonder and I went to Savannah, a city so committed to its moody, moss-draped charm that I briefly forgot Wilmington. Lovely trip. Spectacularly bad timing. 

"You left during the single greatest production surge in Cape Fear history," Amy said. "On purpose." 

"It wasn't that big, Amy. Besides, I didn't know filming was starting.” 

"You never know anything at the time, Hot Shot. That's your whole problem.” 

Exhibit B: The Weather Betrayed Me 
Then I came home to an El Niño summer determined to test the structural integrity of my sinuses. Allergies and heat that could season a cast-iron skillet do not mix well with standing outside a closed film set for six hours, waiting on a "Rolling!" that never comes. 

"You had air conditioning the whole time," Amy said, "in the car that you kept driving away from three separate film sets.” 

"That's not the point, Amy.” 

"It is extremely the point, Bubba." 

Exhibit C: The RJ Decker Fiasco 
Don't think I didn't try. I checked TW Cast & Recruit every morning and paid for it. The real call times are between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m., Ms. Wonder informed me. When Amy heard it, she added, at volume, "That's when the secrets are revealed.” 

One morning I drove to Cinespace Studios fully expecting to find Scott Speedman brooding in a linen suit near the guard gate. Instead, a woman with a handheld camera shooting pickup scenes for an entirely different film, Pretty Ugly, asked me to move behind a dumpster to stay out of her shot. 

I waited there all morning hoping to see Decker. The closest I came to a celebrity sighting was a lost-pet flyer taped to a nearby window — a ferret named Reginald, last seen contemplating his life choices behind a coffee shop. 

Exhibit D: Where Has Cousins Beach Gone? 
Amy and I once raced to the Yacht Basin in Southport where a restaurant was "closed for filming." We were certain we'd cracked Amazon-level security through sheer genius, although it was a public Facebook post. 

We waited out an overcast afternoon before learning that filming didn't start until the evening magic hour. Restless, I proposed a "simple, elegant plan": drive home, freshen up, and come back later. 

It was neither simple nor elegant. Ocean Highway delivered a traffic jam of geological patience. We detoured through a real town called Half Hell, missed our exit by eight miles, turned around, and drove back through Half Hell a second time, which, by Amy's math, equaled Complete Hell. 

Exhibit E: Saltwater 
The mermaid pilot proved the trickiest of the three, mostly because everything I documented turned out to be something else entirely. The lowest point came when I willingly joined a traffic jam on the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, positive I'd found a closed set, before Amy gleefully informed me it was an NCDOT bridge inspection. Not every mystery is Hollywood. Some mysteries are just infrastructure. 

The Verdict 
Three of the biggest productions I've been privileged to be near: the finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty, the swashbuckling return of RJ Decker, and a mermaid pilot swimming quietly through the Cape Fear, and I have exactly zero mermaids to show for it. 

"You only had one job," Amy said. "Document the productions.” 

"I got some footage.” 

"You got a ferret, Cowboy.” 

"Reginald was a whole storyline!” 

"Biscuit Brain!" Amy barked. "It was a lost-pet flyer on a coffee shop window.” 

The Rest of the Story 
Here's the thing about The Circular Journey: there's always tomorrow. All three productions still have locations left to burn through, and I intend to be on set with the unearned confidence of a man who belongs there. 

"I'll be there too," Amy said, and I confess this surprised me. 

"Why? All you do on these outings is insult me.” 

"It's simple, Monkey Boy. Watching you attempt anything and fail spectacularly is, without question, the finest entertainment I get all year. I wouldn't miss it for the world." 

And so, in summation: there's always tomorrow. And apparently, wherever there's a tomorrow, Amy's there too. 

Mindfleet Paradox: Cadet Reginald's RSS Feed

Yo, check the feed, humanity! This is Cadet Reginald—the baddest, slickest ferret ever to sneak a ride aboard the FMS Coastal Voyager, speakin’ straight through your comms. I tapped directly into Five of Five, the ship's onboard Adaptive Intelligence system, and routed this transmission through my MA-1 language translator so y’all can catch the real broadcast from the bridge.

Word is, things up here in the upper decks are reachin' critical mass. Livin' under the reign of the resident teenage tyrant in command of this mindship, the Captain who regularly channels Wonderland's Red Queen, is a whole circus. No cap! 

She dropped some classic truth on the Ambassador the other day, straight-up spittin' the math: "Hold up, chief, you trippin' on a flat beat," that's what she said. "Y’all runnin' twice as fast just to stay stuck in the exact same spot, feel me? If we really tryna get somewhere fly, you gotta flip the script and step your game up, Jack."

She’s got jokes, legit! But the timin' is straight-up messy. Between dodgin' the avolition blues and keepin' the engines clean, a massive dumpster fire just dropped into the sector. 

It be like this: Ambassador promised to use his high-level connections with his slime dawgs over at Mindfleet Headquarters to get the nod for Amy to ditch the current flight plan and hit up a music festival where the rocket man himself, William Shatner, is headlinin' a heavy metal set. 

Amy tried to flex on the intercom, crossin' her arms and givin' the Ambassador a sharp side-eye: "Oh, so you want to put the Captain in a bottleneck and test my flow? That's weak sauce, Unc, real talk."

Then she dropped the bomb: she took it up a couple notches, demandin' elevation to Grand Vizier of All Cognition, complete with a corner office in the frontal lobe and hazard pay for dealin' with the Ambassador's train of thought. You know she did.

But low-key pause, dawg. The Ambassador’s real play is usin' that detour as the ultimate bargainin' chip to get Amy to toss her amped vibes for a promotion.

Amy think she runnin' the decks, but watchin' these two bipeds try to outsmart each other over career climbs and metal concerts is absolute cinema. Me? I'm just kickin' back in the ventilation shafts, keepin' my whiskers clean, and watchin' the chaos unfold.

Until that countdown hits zero, I'ma just keep scoutin' for the giggles in the mix, side-steppin' those heavy avolition blues, and pourin' one out for those random cosmic gaps where anything can pop off, and that includes watchin' the Ambassador tryin' to play the captain runnin' the dome.

Dancing Stones

If you just stumbled in off the interstate, or out of an alternate dimension, pull up a chair and adjust your frequency. Whether you're navigating the humid, moss-draped avenues of coastal North Carolina or just trying to survive your own daily hyperdrive, you’ve landed in the right corner of the universe. Grab a front-row seat, power up your sensors, and let’s dive in.

The planning officers of this world are efficient and thorough. They require every stone to have a fixed coordinate, a verified weight, and a structural purpose. They build a reality governed entirely by zoning laws, system optimizations, and predictable data points.

It's a clean, efficient architecture, but it leaves us living in sterile rooms. The human element, that stubborn and quiet instinct for folklore and fantasy, demands a loophole in the blueprint. We look out at the rigid landscape with a persistent longing for a place where, despite the regulations, a stone might dance.

When I was very young, my great-aunt Nanny showed me the piles of stones at the corners of our pasture. She told me that on nights of the full moon, the fairies came out to play their music, and the stones danced across the open grass to the corners where they piled themselves up. From then on, each full moon, I would stand on the back porch at dusk, when the fireflies came out, watching for dancing stones. The fact that I never actually saw them move didn't discourage me; it only made me more determined.

Later, the planning officers caught up with me. My father told me that Uncle John had carried those stones across the pasture himself to keep the horses from stepping on them and turning an ankle. But my father's practical explanation couldn't erase the folklore. I've never stopped wishing there was a place in the world where stones could dance. It keeps the world from becoming too hard.

That's why I look for dimensional rifts where the rules of the material world break down, and stories take root. Aunt Nanny was a master conjurer. She knew the stones didn't move, but she also knew the enchantment of the story would keep that pasture and that full-moon night alive forever. She wasn't lying; she was introducing me to magic, the kind that keeps a grown man looking out at dusk, when the fireflies come out, and remembering the anticipation of fairy music and dancing stones.

Consider this blog the dimension where the conjurer appears on stage. I'm not here to play the wizard. I have no interest in handing down absolute truths from a mountaintop or pretending to hold the master key to the cosmos. This blog is the conjurer's cabinet. It exists to make room for exaggeration, folklore, and wild speculation, all the things planning officers generally dismiss or ignore.

When we gather the fragments of where we came from, how we got here, and the stories we told ourselves along the way, we're practicing a deliberate, beautiful misdirection. We're looking beyond Uncle John's tractor paths to see what else might be moving in the shadows when the moon is full.

The material of the imagination is alive and kicking. It just needs a stage wide enough to dance on, and a public willing to look past the pasture fence and enjoy the enchantment.

Eternally Surprised (Twice)

I want to get better. I really do. Living with a spoiled little tyrant inside my head is no fun, believe me. On any given day, at any given time, I'm likely to hear something like this:

Now, you see, you're running as fast as you can

and still you're in the same place. If you really

want to get somewhere, you must run twice as fast.

 

That's Princess Amy, channeling the Red Queen. I must say, the young geezer does love the classics.

Her advice is insane, of course, and it's not surprising that I don't respond. Getting that kind of life advice is worse than no advice at all. Leads to apathy, or even worse, avolition. 

I know what you're thinking; it was a new word for me, too, when my therapist, Dr. Coast, first used it. I misunderstood her to say avocation and thought she was talking about my blogging.  

For those disinclined to sprint to WebMD: avolition refers to a total lack of motivation that makes it hard to accomplish anything. Apathy can keep me from publishing a blog post. Avolition can keep me from getting out of bed. The difference is meaningful, particularly to the blog.

Solutions come when you aren't searching.

Over the years, I've found several ways of keeping my head above the clouds when the storms of depression, anxiety, and grief come roaring in from offshore. I don't want you to think I've discovered any secrets; all my coping tools are well-known. They include walking in sunshine, singing along with favorite recording artists, sometimes to the considerable distress of nearby wildlife, and laughter. This very blog is one of my outlets for laughter; it's the reason I launched The Circular Journey in the first place.

One thing I particularly like is reading authors who share funny stories about their own mental health struggles. Looking for the giggles in life's absurdities seems to be a common practice among people with mood disorders. We are, as a group, an excellent company.

During one of Amy's recent tirades, I remembered a book I'd started months earlier but abandoned because it featured taxidermy distantly and unnecessarily. Taxidermy is one of three subjects I avoid in popular entertainment. 

But I was desperate for reading fodder, so, taxidermy be damned, I decided. I started reading the book. There was no bookmark to tell me where I'd left off, so I decided to read a little of each chapter until I found something familiar, then move on. I began reading each chapter, and soon realized I  was in new territory, or so I believed. I was enjoying the book immensely and wondering why on earth I'd ever put it down.

Then I reached a story near the end. It was the author's account of how she routinely watches movies, thinking she's never seen them, only to realize at the climax that she has, in fact, seen them before.

As I read that story, I experienced that feeling called déjà vu. I realized I'd read that chapter before. In fact, I'd read the entire book. Every word of it.

Amazingly, I had just experienced, in real time, the precise phenomenon the author was describing, while reading her very description of it.

I'll bet the Japanese have a word for that. They have a word for everything. Must be all the leisure time created by zazen meditation.

It's all predictable until it isn't.

Now that I think about it, perhaps I should give that multiple-worlds theory another look. If there are entangled particles of mine floating around in a parallel dimension, I'd at least like to know if that version of me finished the book the first time. 

And so there you have it--again. It may not be the best life, but it's mine. And as I navigate the quantum fields of whimsy that make up my days, I have no better option than to look for all the laughter I can find in the folly. 

And so rather than wrestle with avolition, I raise a glass to the laughter that sparkles like sunlight on the sea in those interstitial spaces, where the moments don't quite touch and anything, apparently, anything can happen twice.