Sometimes You Have to Wait

I came across this photo/print from the photographer John Margolies randomly looking through The Library of Congress website one day and almost immediately, I recalled all the photos I used to take as a kid with my 35mm. I took that thing everywhere: skateboarding day trip and long trips with the dudes; TEAM days and high school days snapping photos of the most mundane shit like glasses of freshly poured milk; lounging around the house taking strange photo shoots with my cat Mel holding a lit candle and an apple; many, many selfies. Back in the early 2000’s, there were no phones to just snap a picture, you had to use (pause for shock and awe) a separate device to do something. Maybe the closest thing to phone/camera in terms of speed was probably the FUN SAVER, a truly revolutionary piece of hardware that now likely make up the majority of the worlds landfill.

But what Mr. Margolies photograph reminded me of most was my time in TEAM, an alternative wilderness school which now appears defunct. For brevity’s sake, it was a place of learning with more of a student/nature focus where I, according to my mother, was released from whatever depression I had fallen into from around sixth-grade until junior year in high school. That time calls for a much longer post yet I’m mentioning TEAM now primarily in correlation to the recent and absurd cuts from Trump and DOGE cutting thousands of federal government employees within the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service for the sake of “efficiency”.

AP reports, "It is affecting more than just the national capital region, home to about 20% of the 2.4 million members of the civilian federal workforce, which does not include military personnel and postal workers. More than 80% of that workforce lives outside the Washington area." Approximately 3,400 Forest Service and 1,000 National Park Service jobs were cut nationwide. These cuts will have a direct effect on families and children who were quite excited to venture into the great unknown, much like me. Plus, legally, as an American citizen, it is their land; it is our land. This should not go unnoticed. This should be fought for because just because you may not know what you have doesn't mean you should be so ready to give it away.

This weeks FREE newsletter includes musings and revelations about:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Knowing When

The Extinction Burst Effect

Lessons from the show, The Pitt

Gabriel García Márquez and Knowing When

One random day, I was killing time while time was killing me, I came across a great writer and all around person, Alexander Chee, sharing a piece from the Paris Review titled, “Solitude & Company: An Oral Biography of Gabriel García Márquez” by Silvana Paternostro. The passage can be found below:

“He tried to write One Hundred Years of Solitude early on. At the beginning he called it his mamotreto [big notebook]. It was not spoken of; he could not write it. He knew the novel needed a writer with more experience, so he waited until the day he became the writer capable of writing One Hundred Years of Solitude. It has to do with command of technique. You need a great deal of technique to write a novel like that. He knows the tale; he has the characters and storyline but he couldn’t write it. You have a novel that has to be typewritten, but you can’t type, so you have to wait until you learn to type it up; the novel is there, waiting.”

And man, did this knock me back on my fuckin’ ass. Instantly, I thought of my own novel, Actor: A Novel in Three Parts, and how I’ve been toiling away it since probably 2017 and only now, do I feel like a writer capable of writing such a thing. Similar to Mr. Márquez, I know the tale, the characters, and the storyline but for years and years, I couldn’t write it. I mean, I wrote it but, it wasn’t really it yet. I could attempt to go at a scene or try something experimental if I felt stuck to get the juices flowing but ultimately, it never felt like the work was meeting the writer I knew I was for its demands. “You have a novel that has to be typewritten, but you can’t type,” the character of GUILLERMO ANGULO explains, “so you have to wait until you learn to type it up; the novel is there, waiting.” It also reminded me of a girl I knew in college. She was a singer training to work in opera who was fully aware that, even at 20 or whatever age she was, she would not reach full potential/maturation until she was in her mid 30’s. I thought this was crazy but she didn’t seem to mind at all. She loved singing and didn't mind about "the wait."

The Extinction Burst Effect

The term extinction burst is used primarily in behavioral psychology and in relation to now President Trump and MAGA, I had to unpack it. According to Psychology Today, an extinction burst is “a sudden and dramatic increase in an unwanted behavior that occurs when reinforcement for that behavior is removed, essentially a temporary "explosion" of the behavior just before it eventually diminishes and disappears completely.” The definition goes on to explain that it is actually quite common and reports have found that the "…behavior might initially worsen before ultimately decreasing when reinforcement is consistently withheld.”

In other words, it is a kind of death throe after an extended and intense trend of behavior…like a drunks last night out before getting sober or a fit of uncontrollable laughter until a long bout of silence. The core of an extinction burst is that "things get worse before they get better" regarding a specific behavior.

As I dug a little deeper into this term, I came across various platforms and blogs correlationg it with President Trump and Maga as well as the far far left. Nowadays, it feels almost impossible to connect anything that doesn’t involve the present socio-political environment we’re in so, here we are. To me and much of the media landscape I toil in day to day, this “burst” looks and feels very much underway…flying dangerously close to the sun in the heights of these types of extreme behaviors many could have never imagined. Even worse, it’s all being continually reinforced/supported by those in power.

This isn’t me choosing sides here but more so looking at the behavior and observing that eventually, likely when Trump either loses in four years or somehow continues on with whatever the hell the “Third Term Project” is, we may as a nation see such an extinction burst from Maga before the tide of this thing finally pulls back. What that will be is anyone’s guess but, looking back in history (if we even can by then) it likely won’t be great. Conversely, if Trump does in fact win in 2028, and extinction burst from the Dems/Left, potentially signaling the final nail in American politics as we know it. Depending on how one looks at it, the angle of such an event, negative or positive aside, theoretically confirms some kind of end.

With what kind of beginning thereafter…who knows.

Lessons from the show, The Pitt

I have this horrible tendency (especially if I’ve had a few drinks) to just start talking in the middle of a TV show or a movie. Yes, I am that guy if I am so inspired. Again, it’s worse if I’ve had a few drinks because that’s when the “ideas” really start flowing…until they don’t and turn to mush. One such idea (to the annoyance of my wife who is always laying snugly beside me) came from the HBO MAX show, The Pitt, a weirdly addicting American medical drama television series dropped early January 2025. The shows creator, R. Scott Gemmill (ER OG!), unfolds the show over a single 15-hour emergency department shift at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital, often referred to as “The Pitt" by its staff and patients. The other night, in the shows wild cadence going from one patient and scene to the next, we were presented with one patient which was more difficult or maybe shocking than the others: a little girl, probably five-ish, was trying to be resuscitated after attempting to save her sister in a lake/pool/some kind of body of water. (*SPOILER ALERT*) The little girl sadly dies, and the acting, in parallel with the scene, characters, and circumstances obviously being heavy, was true and real, thus making the hit of the entire scene much more effective. Sometimes the performances in the show are…and no hate to the actors…a bit forced/corny.

I noticed tears in my wife's eyes, clearly struck by the performance. On the other hand, I started blabbering about how these characters' tragedies, just like some characters' victories and triumphs, in the end add to the collective evolution of humanity itself. Or, more simply, without these kinds of moments within the types of stories, we as a people, as humanity, would not be where we are today. Then I thought it was humanities duty to ensure that all people should be able to live on the same playing field of equal levels of victories and tragedy; that no one people or culture should be asked or force to carry the burden of tragedy more than any other while others frolic around in all of the joys of the world. Of course, I realizes, in all my idealism, privilege, and hope, that this far, far from the reality of the world today and in the past. This led me to find others who toyed around with such a concept and found sociologists like Maurice Halbwachs. He argued that shared remembrances of tragedies (e.g., wars, disasters) and triumphs (e.g., significant societal achievements) shape group identity and, through these stories that accumulate over huge swaths of time form into a kind of cultural tapestry that guides future generations, illustrating the lessons learned and the heights yet to be reached by those living today and those yet born.

It's safe to say I didn't say all that while watching the show. My wife told me swiftly to shut up, which I’ve learned to listen to over almost eight years.

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