More Old Age Stuff

                Getting On In Years

People who say that getting old is all in the mind

don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

My mind – meaning intellectual capability,

curiosity, imagination, creativity, and so on –

is as strong and vibrant as ever,

if not more so.

Getting old, for me at least, is all in the body.

My knees hurt more on chilly mornings, for one thing,

my thighs ache after climbing small hills,

and although I’ve always felt uncomfortable

with being normal,

my research on the internet reassures me

that my disturbed sleep patterns –

insomnia, I’ve learnt, is something different,

but most of us call it that anyway –

and my body’s erratic thermal regulation,

which means that I have to be constantly

adding and shedding clothing layers,

are normal signs of ageing.

I’ve also noticed, but haven’t researched,

that my hair, which has grown lighter in colour,

though still not white or grey,

has begun to grow much more slowly,

and that my beard and nails

have begun to grow incredibly fast.

Denying these and other physical changes, to me at least,

would be an example of a mind that’s old.

I’ve always tried my best to be intellectually honest,

and I don’t intend to change that now.

              Two to One

As the GP took my blood pressure

and listened to my thumper,

I compared how young my mind felt

with how old my body felt.

Then I turned my head to the right

and saw a small mirror on the wall.

The reflection of my countenance

filled the glass,

and I reflected upon my appearance.

That sealed it –

it was two to one

in favour of old.

             Being A Grumpy Old Weirdo

I realise that I occupy a niche market,

socially,

and that as a person I don’t appeal,

for one reason or another,

often under the heading of being

different, or weird,

to most other people in general.

Still, I do try to be nice, respectful, and nonaggressive,

but despite this some people

have actively disliked me,

two examples being my children’s grandmothers.

Both of them.

Sometimes this has in some ways been incomprehensible to me;

at other times and in other ways,

well, yeah, okay.

It’s easier now that I’m officially old.

Being a grumpy old fart,

irascible, cantankerous, and eccentric,

is a generally acceptable role.

          Hair and Teeth

When I was about thirty-five

I made a sentimental journey

to visit old friends in Los Angeles

and, amongst others,

caught up with Alfredo,

a truly lovely person,

who was then about fifty.

He told me that his age made no difference to him

because he still had all of his hair and teeth.

As I compose this I’m fifteen years older

than he was then.

I still have most of my hair

and all but two of my teeth,

but that means precious little

to me.

             Cataracts: Feb 2014

It’s strange and interesting,

but also increasingly inconvenient,

this business of slowly going blind.

I now need to wear glasses when watching TV,

something I’d never had to do before,

and the smaller screen graphics

have become too blurry to read,

especially if I watch from more than a metre or two away.

I frequently have to sit up close

to the computer monitor

to see what’s going on.

I was unable to make out clearly the features of a woman

just a few metres away at the bus stop

because she was a bit to my left.

I’m blinder in my left eye.

I have to get down on my knees and put on my glasses

to see if a bottom-shelf price marker at the Pak’n Save

is $6.98 or $8.89.

I can no longer read the fine print on labels,

no matter how I adjust my glasses

or change the labels’ distance from my eyes

(this means that I didn’t know the alcohol percentage

of the cheap Indian whisky I bought).

       Codgerhood

On a day with no orders,

no work, no meaning,

fussing pointlessly

with my word collection,

it occurred to me

that I really had become

a dotty old codger.

       Civilisation and Age

As my understanding

of the corruption

endemic in human civilisation

has increased,

the ability of our species

to harm itself and others

has also increased.

It now seems to me

that sooner or later, therefore,

a whole world of metaphoric shit

is going to start flying

from that metaphoric fan

and that things even here

in inconsequential Hamilton

are likely to become too ugly to contemplate.

I feel sad for my daughters,

but selfishly think

that it’s a good thing for me

that I’m old.

   The Spectre of the Misery Industry

I’m getting to an age

at which I’ve come to fear

ending up in a rest home:

crappy food,

high costs,

underpaid and overworked hired carers

who don’t really care

about those depending on them,

at least as individual people,

and who quickly become inured to their suffering,

and neglectful of their needs.

The up side to all this

is that it provides big bucks

for the plutocrats who own these places

so they can buy

loads of shit that they don’t need

and that doesn’t make them happy –

the only thing that can make them at least feel happy

being the thrill that they get

by fucking over less-powerful people.

              Continuously Me

I don’t climb stairs two at a time any more,

and sometimes I feel more comfortable

grabbing the banister with two hands,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

I can no longer walk more than a few dozen metres

without experiencing severe back pain

unless I take some analgesic

a few hours in advance,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

The cataract blinding my left eye

makes the faces of people even just across the street blurry,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

My body temperature takes at least an hour to stabilise

after I walk to the supermarket and back,

even on pleasantly cool mornings,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

I can no longer enjoy large, balanced meals,

and feel full after eating a single sandwich,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

I no longer produce copious amounts of semen

almost continuously,

but inside my head, y’know,

I’m still just me,

just as I’ve always been.

Old Age

                             Okay, I’m Old

Okay, I’m old.

Although some people insist on insisting

that I don’t look as old as I am,

as far as I’m concerned that’s no

Big Fucking Deal.

Numbers may indeed be abstractions,

but numbers, meaning years of age, are scary,

and numbers, meaning years of age, are silly,

sometimes.

It all depends –

on how dependable

or dependent things are –

doesn’t it?

First, the scary:

I’m 71.

Scared the shit out of you didn’t I?

Oooh, I hope that filthy old fart doesn’t want any intimacy with me!

Next, the silly:

I mean – despite the numbers, I’ve always been who I am, y’know?

and part of me’s always been eight years old,

since I was eight,

and at moments still I’m that 10-year-old at camp,

or that suffering, clueless teenager,

and I don’t particularly like the part of me

who was at my idiot testosterone peak when I was 25,

and too much of me remains of the doormat I’d become 20 years later,

and have in some ways always been,

and of course part of me’s always 15 years old –

especially when I see long, well-toned female legs, and so forth.

And that’s the point, isn’t it?

Because that’s ridiculous

because I’m old,

and because I don’t think I deserve ridicule –

at least not for that,

but Big Fucking Deal, eh?

                                 Old

It gets right up my nose;

I mean, it really sticks in my craw

when, in the flow of conversation,

in regard to, say, riding on city buses,

I off-handedly refer to myself as being old,

and another party to the conversation,

usually with a patronising or condescending smile,

contradicts me and insists, ‘Oh, you’re not old!’,

or some crap like that,

and asserts the superiority of using some euphemism.

This always offends the shit out of me.

I know it shouldn’t, but not giving a shit

about what I should or shouldn’t feel

is one of the advantages of being old.

It offends me because it’s an affront to the English language,

to which I have devoted a large portion of my life.

Old means old, as in having stayed alive for a long time.

It disgusts me when they treat it as if it were a dirty word.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

A really ugly line is, ‘You’re only as old as you think you are,’

as if lying to myself were a virtue,

and personal honesty and integrity a loathsome deformity.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

Another bullshit insult is, ‘But you have such a young mind!’

My mind right now is enormously superior to what it was 50 years ago.

As if my lifetime of curiosity and experience, and reflection on both,

hasn’t meant a constantly improving mind! Fuck that.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

Being old also means having arthritis and cataracts

and other physical niggles. Okay. That’s part of it.

It’d be a real drag to have them if I were still young,

but I’m not.

                    Notes On The Slipperiness Of Days

The days slide by like turds along the endless cosmic sewer pipe,

never pausing, never looking behind, never looking ahead.

Wednesday? Friday? I don’t know and I don’t care.

My mind has continuously engulfed the experience

that the shit all around me has provided,

my growth in understanding and wisdom

as imperceptibly gradual as my body’s deterioration.

My emotional life, however, has remained stunted;

having the emotional development of a nine-year-old

has made being old doesn’t seem unreal to me;

I view myself with child eyes,

which helps to make my reality seem distantly unreal,

as the days slide by.

I walk my old dog daily,

elevated by the caress of opioids or opiates, plus cannabis,

and usually no more than a wee bit of pain;

the doppler-effect rumble and hraahoomsh of traffic lends its music

to the dancing molecules in my brain and nervous system,

connecting me with my own kind

better than most face-to-face encounters,

as the days slide by.

Even middle age, and all that entails

is a fading memory that won’t slip away,

although the septic emotional wounds of that time

remain encrusted on top of all the day-turds

from childhood and onward,

as the days slide by.

I bought my new coat about a half a year before composing this,

or maybe it was about a year, or more, or something like that.

The days do slide by.

                               Progress

As soon as I become accustomed

to the aches and pains and points of fatigue

that come with being how old I am,

I grow older still and have new ones to contend with.

                             That Old

I may have been whinging

about one or more of the ways

my body’s deterioration over time

has inconvenienced me or worse –

but anyway she accused me,

as many others have done

(why they have to make it sound like an accusation I can only guess),

‘Oh, you’re not that old!’

and I began to wonder, as I do,

being the type of person who wonders about shit,

how old is that old, anyhow?

By what units do we measure it?

By months and years?

By tastes and attitudes?

By technological competence?

By knowledge of pop culture, both now and then?

By speed going up and down stairs?

By body odour?

By the number of grandchildren?

By how long we’ve been telling the same old jokes?

By the amount of wisdom accumulated?

… and where and how do we set the line for any of these

between what is just not as young as we used to be

and being that old?

Old enough to know better, I suppose.

                    National Super

It doesn’t seem real.

After struggling for years to survive

both financially and psychologically at the same time

(the word simultaneously wouldn’t have worked there),

just as I was close to having to sell my house

in order to do so I

simultaneously

reached my sixty-fifth birthday,

and as much money as I’d been paid some months,

and more than I’d been paid in some months lately,

before taxes,

doing the demanding and difficult work that I do –

excellently, permit me to add –

began to appear, after tax, like magic,

in my bank account every other Tuesday,

and although I still had burdensome debts to pay off,

I began to have to suffer less from privation.

It seems extraordinary to someone, such as myself,

who has a generally low opinion of my species,

that anyone, let alone a country,

actually takes care of tired old people, such as myself,

without asking questions, stuffing up, or saying,

‘Nyah! Nyah! Just teasing! We’re taking it back!’

I still expect them to do these things,

being largely incapable

of real interpersonal trust.

                   Rice Isn’t A Daily Thing Here

I don’t panic over work pressure anymore.

If I can’t do my work at a leisurely pace

that’s other people’s problem –

it doesn’t matter to me.

My superannuation pension has provided me

with what the Maoists would’ve probably called

my iron wine bottle.

                                 Seventy

Floating, or sinking, along a footpath – or both or neither,

a cool breeze ruffling my forearms’ hairs,

the high grey clouds diffusing what light was left

as the daytime shaded into the evening,

I focused on the outlines of the trees, still full of green leaves

despite the equinox having passed a couple of weeks before.

I felt connected to everything but humans –

humans who feel compelled to try to impose their egos

onto phenomena ridiculously larger than themselves,

onto phenomena absolutely indifferent to themselves,

such as by believing that by throwing a switch or something

at midnight on the first day of March

they have magically changed the season from summer to autumn,

here in the Southern Hemisphere,

although midnight and March are both random cultural inventions

that they’ve invented for their convenience,

and have nothing to do with the Earth itself,

the changing of the seasons obviously being

a gradual and multifaceted process.

Flip a switch. Say it’s official.

The seasons themselves couldn’t give less of a shit,

less even than the official-season crowd gives for the actual seasons.

The same for anniversaries and holy days – or holidays –

take your pick.

Time slides by seamlessly, incomprehensibly, indifferently.

The difference between my last day of being 69 and my seventieth birthday

being neither more nor less

than that between any other two consecutive days,

the universe throwing no switch

and caring not at all about my personal bullshit.

Despite my knowing better, though,

my awareness of this particular seamless transition

stirred up my personal bullshit within me,

and weighed heavily and stupidly on my human mind.