Chloe & Maude
My what a busy week! Thursday night we hosted an art reception for an exhibit my dear friend Christine Shields curated. We served snacks, her band SteepleChase played and Donal Mosher read ghost stories. Afterward, I went home to relieve the babysitter. The following evening we held a reading with three hunky, punk authors -- Joe Meno, Todd Daylor, and Todd Dills. Following the awesome but scantly attended reading, I took them out for crepes and cocktails (but they wouldn't let me pay) and we bitched about the book industries and caught each other up on our current projects -- Joe and his wife are planning a family, Todd D. and his wife are moving to Birmingham, and Todd T. is starting a publishing resource center in Los Angeles. On Saturday, I had the honor of meeting Robert Scheer. The store was packed with mostly old-timer activists. Although I had a date, I couldn't decline his invitation to dinner, where I had one of the most interesting and provocative conversations I've ever had, let alone with a senior citizen (he's 70). Robert Scheer is the guy who got Jimmy Carter to admit in a Playboy interview that he had "lust in his heart", so you can imagine the conversation is going to be good.
I often look at older people and wonder what they looked like when they were younger, wonder if they feel a connection with their past or if in the process of growing old they just become a different people altogether, shedding their youthful identity and concerns, which are then replaced with a laundry list of physical ailments, a few unfortunate idiosyncrasies, and the force of habit which is just enough to propel them along until they arrive at their final resting place. Of course, I know this is ridiculous, but it is largely my experience of old people. They loose their vitality, they disengage from the outside world, they're easily offended, and they complain a lot.
I bemoan the fact that I have no elders left to sit at the knee of and receive benevolent wisdom from, but the truth is I'm afraid of developing relationships with older people. Not because they are presumably closer to death than I am, but because I fear their regrets, their bitterness, and their resentment of being old. My grasp on happiness and a reason to persevere is tenuous enough -- I don't need to be exposed to the old person equivalent of "life sucks and then you die". I've been learning by negative example for most of my life, now I'd like some positive role models.
I've got to get to work so I'll be back later to update this post.
I often look at older people and wonder what they looked like when they were younger, wonder if they feel a connection with their past or if in the process of growing old they just become a different people altogether, shedding their youthful identity and concerns, which are then replaced with a laundry list of physical ailments, a few unfortunate idiosyncrasies, and the force of habit which is just enough to propel them along until they arrive at their final resting place. Of course, I know this is ridiculous, but it is largely my experience of old people. They loose their vitality, they disengage from the outside world, they're easily offended, and they complain a lot.
I bemoan the fact that I have no elders left to sit at the knee of and receive benevolent wisdom from, but the truth is I'm afraid of developing relationships with older people. Not because they are presumably closer to death than I am, but because I fear their regrets, their bitterness, and their resentment of being old. My grasp on happiness and a reason to persevere is tenuous enough -- I don't need to be exposed to the old person equivalent of "life sucks and then you die". I've been learning by negative example for most of my life, now I'd like some positive role models.
I've got to get to work so I'll be back later to update this post.