Sunday, December 8, 2024, the age meter will advance one more year to 76. Yay, I made it.

“He who hesitates is a damned fool.” ― Mae West

I don’t know why I keep trying to hide the fact that I am getting old(er). That all those memories I have of a youth in the fifties, the raging teenager of the sixties, the assertive, ambitious adult of the seventies, the cracking, confused, drug and alcohol addled casualty of the eighties who then went on to refuse to lay down and be catatonic throughout the nineties while still being dazed by alcohol and drugs, jumping into the first decade of the twenty first century although constantly haunted by the fears and desperation of those earlier hurdles only to be saved on 9/11 of all dates and for the next thirteen years escaped into reading and writing (I guess there could be worst things) and education and arriving at the young ripe age of 76, my mind and body remind me that in spite of the number and the memories, I am still here, writing this not as a eulogy of where I’ve been but as tribute to survival and a testament that I still have much more living that I dream and pray (to the spirits in me) that I can attack each day with the same fervor and ambition that I have wrangled coming out of every crater that I sometimes have fallen into. I may have gotten old(er), but shit, I’m not dead, as evidenced by my writing this essay.

We are in strange times but not unknown times. I’ve been here before—a witness to the insanity of humans. I used to be alarmed by it. A blue funk would descend on me, and I would use it as a pretense to hurt myself and others. To become lost in a fog rather than stand and face the enemy of my soul. I won’t repeat what it was. Forty-five years of it was enough proof. No, thirteen years after walking away from those overwhelming burdens, I now scheme for another me.

One where my mind, my imagination can create worlds in my head that can ooze into this computer and escape into the real world where people can rejoice at the words, turn them into music for the soul, dance the stories across stages, smell their emotions, eat their visions, make them their own so they can live and play happily ever after where a little insight, an epiphany can spark some tiny, tiny hope, an aha moment where anything can seem possible. Where we can bathe in each other’s humanity. Those excesses of my youth are not reminders of regret but essential lessons that I want to turn into masterpieces (I will not expect any Nobel Prize for Literature). I only want to be able to think about it, create it, share it, and use it for the inspiration needed for the next one and the next one after that until my mind and fingers go cold.

“Life is much too important to be taken seriously.”― Oscar Wilde

At 76 (75 was the beginning), I think differently and see myself and life differently than, let’s say, when I was 18 and cocky and couldn’t wait for, what was it, 21 when I could legally drink and be an “adult” and do whatever the hell I want and no one could tell me what to do and if I wanted to use drugs and lay in the gutter from an overdose, well, that was my universal human right to do so. Yeah, I said it…what an asshole.

Something about aging can help you make sense of those times, or you can ignore it and hope your mind will refuse to learn anything from that time and all the times like it. You know the ones. The ones that sometimes haunt you in your sleeping dreams and the waked moments when they come out of nowhere while watching TV, sitting on the toilet, or driving to LA. The guilt that constantly interrupts moments of quiet meditation or that long stare you acquire when driving a long distance. (Can I catch a fucking break?)

I don’t think so. I’ve just decided that I will do both: make sense of it all and accept that sometimes focusing on all that guilt doesn’t do anything for me, doesn’t prevent the aging process, doesn’t power my pacemaker, doesn’t relieve me of my high blood pressure, sure doesn’t help me with the overweight cargo on my aging body, hell, it doesn’t even help me with my damn chronic cough (it’s better now), the eyesight that will soon face the challenge of cataracts and those damn floaters that I attempt to ignore until I close my eyes. Yeah, aging throws a long list of physical threats at a person, but who’s counting them?

I have grandmothers and aunts who lived well into their nineties and whose bodies finally surrendered at 101 and 103. Their minds may have surrendered earlier, but they were still there physically, and it seemed like evidence to me that there was a chance that I could live (maybe not the right word) that long.

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”― E. E. Cummings

In the meantime, I must focus on today, the next day, and the day after that, where I will continue exploring the worlds inside and outside of my head. I will read physical and electronic books until my eyes clog up with residue. I no longer want to see the spectacle and waste of human potential. Write until my fingers cramp up like twisted metal. Until I can no longer touch the keyboard and tap out coded messages that only the curious can understand, seek knowledge that inspires, challenges, crystallizes, decodes, interprets, and builds a continuing ideal for how I should live in every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year as if doing so will slow down time, living in my head all that time measurement, not as a yardstick but as experiences and dreams and hell, everything I’ve ever wanted to do and fuck anyone (except Sumi) who tells me that I can’t (of course, as long as I don’t hurt anyone else).

I will not be selfish other than taking care of myself first because I can’t help anyone if I can’t help myself. But I will feel free to speak my mind, resist the crazy, help build the battlements against the falsehoods and conspiracies to return to a time we all swore would never reappear again, to love and not hate, to teach and not despair that some will never hear me or care about me and that’s okay. Some things just are and will continue to be.

At 76, I have my own time and my ambitions. I don’t have time for anything that would prevent me from living the life I want to live.

“I close my eyes/Only for a moment and the moment’s gone…” Dust in the Wind Kansas