Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Humanities, Literature, Memories

The Wide World and Beyond

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Imbolc                                                  Woodpecker Moon

A friend, who, like me, recently turned 65, said to me, “I just realized there’s so much to learn.  For example, I don’t know anything about China.”  This is an intelligent, well-read guy.  Hard to imagine someone waking up to the amount of things they don’t know at age 65, but I guess this is a true instance of better late than never.

For some reason this makes me recall those little orange biographies that used to sit in the library, though whether the public or school, I don’t recall.  Not too long, they offered a quick glimpse into famous american’s lives.  The content has either been absorbed or long forgotten, but the world they opened up, a world of people and places I had never experienced, remains.

I mention them because there were so many side streets on the boulevard of learning, some of which I knew well, most poorly, but they were in my consciousness from a very young age.

Another guy, also a friend, said recently that he’d decided if he hasn’t learned it now, he doesn’t need it.  Following that thought he went on to say that he was “giving up introspection.”  In the ensuing explanation it turned out he was really throwing away self-help books, other peoples ways.

In fact, what he was doing was allowing himself to start introspection.  Only when we go into ourselves without a guide, no training wheels, just you and the you you carry along, can we begin to make progress.  The Delphic Oracle said it best, “Know thyself.”

I’ve read people recently who say this is a bad idea, though I forget the arguments right now, but I’ve found it a very good idea.  A project still underway here at chez Ellis.

 

 

Aging, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Family

Shun Yen and Falun Gong, once more

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Imbolc                                    Woodpecker Moon

One more thing about Shun Yen (see below).  Their pitch is that they produce performances that draw on and therefore promote 5,000 years of Chinese culture.  Maybe.  They have dances based on various Chinese myths and legends, like Monkey’s Journey to the West, and on ethnic Chinese communities, but there are also contemporary dance pieces and, scattered throughout something very, very odd.

The contemporary pieces feature a common theme.  Black clad police thugs with red hammer and sickle insignia on their shirts.  They beat senseless the gentle, meditating citizens who hold up a sign that says Falun Dafa is Good.  Yes, Chinese police have beaten Falun Dafa or Falun Gong members and persecuted them.  That’s not at issue here, but, again, I paid $90 a ticket to see several dance numbers that were propaganda against the Chinese government.

There was no balance here, no context, no alerting the audience to the fact that this was their intention.

These vignettes, I think there were four, were not the oddest part of the evening however. Four times during the performance the dancers would remain off stage and a Steinway, a big black concert Steinway, and either a tuxedoed male singer or a formal gown clad female singer, all Chinese, would sing short verses, maybe they were songs, that declared some piece of Falun Dafa dogma.   Continue reading Shun Yen and Falun Gong, once more →

Aging, Cooking, Family, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Saturday

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

Did my workout last night so I have Saturday and Sunday free.  Feels very luxurious.  This short burst workout economizes time while maximizing result.  What a deal.

We had our business meeting.  Still tinkering with the budget.  We’ve got the large outline and the big expenses well in hand, now we’re looking at other areas where we spend less per transaction, where the patterns are not yet obvious.  Kate’s learning Excel and grumbling all the way about it, but I can tell she’s proud of her progress.

Kate made pumpernickel bread.  It has molasses, espresso and chocolate among other things.  Who knew?  A moist tasty bread.

I’m feeling good about the start on reimagining.  I want to get a little looser, more free-form with the words and their implications.  Over time certain things will begin to clump together.  Right now, this writing aims toward a presentation on April 1st at Groveland UU.  It is also the first essay of maybe 10-12 that will constitute Reimagining.  At least as I imagine it now.  Ha, ha.

Off to the grocery store.  Using that former exercise time for the common good.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings

Fun? Bah, Humbug

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

OK, so maybe having the ex on your facebook friends list is odd, but we do share a son and besides, hey we gitta along.  Anyhow she posts a facebook photo of her with her latest guy–who lives, weirdly enough, in Andover not far from us.  She’s dressed as Cher, he’s dressed as Bono.

She looks like she’s having fun.  Then I think, in one of those places it’s not wise to go but who tells the mind what paths it can travel, what do I do for fun?  Ooops.  OK.  Can’t think of anything.  I asked Kate last night what we do for fun.  She couldn’t think of anything either.

OMG.  Dreary northern europeans celebrating the winter solstice with a candle.  That sort of thing.

As I’m wont to do when perplexed, I picked up my bible, my word bible that is, the Oxford English Dictionary (literally the best dollar I ever spent since I got this two volume complete version back when the History Book Club sold them as comeons for new customers) and look up fun.

Once in a while things turn out really well.  There are two entries, one for a noun and one for a verb.  In both cases the 1st, therefore dominant (and occasionally obsolete) definition is:  a cheat, a hoax, a trick.  The other definitions aren’t much better.  2. n.  diversion, amusement, sport jocularity, drollery.  and 2. to make fun or sport, to indulge in fun, to joke. Not much to worry about not having much of, I decided.

Still, I wondered, what about enjoyment or delight?  They’re different.  Delight:  pleasure, joy or gratification felt in a high degree.  Enjoy:  to be in joy or in a joyous state, to manifest joy, exult, rejoice.

Then came the light bulb:  joy 2.b  to experience pleasure, be happy now chiefly to find pleasure in an occasion of festivity or social intercourse.

There’s the smoking gun of extroversion–now chiefly to find pleasure in an occasion of festivity or social intercourse.

In this youth drenched, extroversion drunk country of ours, it’s possible for those of us introverts to lose sight of what delights us, what we enjoy. (admission:  Kate wondered whether we should look at what we enjoy.)

Yes, it’s weird, but Latin delights me.  After a struggle with a verse or a grammatical construction, at that moment when the obfuscation clears, delight.  Planting in the spring.  Caring for the bees.  Travel.  Writing.  Being with the grandkids.  Seeing our kids.  Reading. Playing with and taking care of the dogs and each other.  Art, cinema, jazz.  Quiet moments.

Sounds like a blurb for E-Romance doesn’t it?  So, I’m happy, no delighted, to tell you that Kate and I enjoy many, many things.  But fun isn’t one of them.

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Retirement

Here’s Looking At Ye’

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Imbolc                                    Garden Planning Moon

Got my self inserted into the Sports Show conversation among MIA docents.  I’ve not had time to check out the catalog or e-mails until today.

My commitment to work at the MIA has kept hold of me, even over the last few weeks where I’ve considered jettisoning it altogether in favor of a more personal, private approach.  Research for this new show and excitement about the Rembrandt and Terra Cotta Warrior show coming up reminded me why I love this work.

It feeds a different part of me than the more masculine, tough-guy, bare-knuckle world of politics.  I’ve had plenty of time with that guy and there are others out there still willing to get in the ring.  I’m stepping back from the political world, at least for now.

But the MIA?  Nope, I’ve decided I love it there, that the work still calls me and so do my friends among the docents.  I’m there to stay.  At least for now.

Aging, Family, Travel

Dining In Lima, Peru

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Winter                                            Garden Planning Moon

Another bit of photoshop work.  This photo in Pizarro’s house in Lima, Peru.

One other odd bit of info.  Tomorrow I go off private health insurance and enter Medicare.  A transition I’m making with this beautiful lady.

Also, look tomorrow for Imbolc posting.

Aging, Family, Retirement, Writing

Unchain My TP

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Winter                                         Garden Planning Moon

Second (and last of this class) photoshop class tonight.  Boy, is this a complex program and it’s only one in the Creative Suite.  Lot of cool things but they will require a good bit of fiddling with before I get good with them.  A lot of fiddling.

(granddaughter Ruth and lightning)

As I walked to the parking lot from the huge Champlain High School building tonight, it hit me that this is the future for many of us over 65.  Classes, taking up space in buildings occupied by kids during the day.  And what a great deal that we have this kind of learning available.

Last week I used one of the second floor bathrooms.  In the men’s room the toilet paper was on a heavy, padlocked metal chain.  The janitor was there and I asked him about it.  He said you wouldn’t believe the condition of the restrooms at the end of many school days.

Best news.  My cousin Leisa, in a coma for a couple of months following a stroke, has begun to speak.  Stunning and happy news.

A productive day, another 1,500 words on Missing, some tentative stabs at the first essay in Reimagining and a long workout with little knee pain.  Yeah.

Since I’ve shifted to this new work schedule, life seems fuller and busier.  Seems odd, but it’s true.  I guess I’m stuck with an internal engine that will just keep humming along until it can’t work anymore.  There are much worse predicaments.  In fact this may not be a predicament, just life continuing.

Aging

The Anti-Rogaine Hair Loss Treatment

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Winter                                       Garden Planning Moon

On a round of errands.  First stop.  CVS.  Two items:  a knee brace, number 2 for my left knee, now complaining because I’ve left it unsupported.  I think.

And, of all things, Nair.  For my head.  Yes, that’s right. I’m about to try something I consider weird.  Sort of the anti-Rogaine approach to hair loss.  This stems from a period, recent past, when my hair grew out and the remaining hair on top insisted on standing up and imitating a mohawk, a really wispy, faint mohawk.  What to do?

Comb it over?  Didn’t work.  Static electricity kept popping it back up.  Kate cut it with the rest of my hair but then the remaining lawn on top had a raggedy look.  So, I took the clippers and shaved the edges.  Ah.  More symmetrical.

Still.  Looked silly.  Next stop.  The razor.  Yes, I shaved my head.  I know, but hey, I said adjusting to the last third of life had its moments.  This is one of them for me.  Kate suggested a hypoallergenic depilatory.  Say that one ten times fast.

I find this product on shelf space devoted to waxing.  Specifically Brazilian bikini waxing.  I know.  Do I want products like that on my head?  Fortunately, the old standard from long ago, Nair, comes in several flavors, one of them for sensitive skin.  Mine.  Gonna try it.

What’s next?  Johnson’s Wax for that all day shine.

Aging, Bees, Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Under the Garden Planning Moon

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Winter                                   New (Garden Planning) Moon

In the next couple of weeks I’ll order two packages of bees, 2#, to install in mid-April. Two hives produce plenty of honey for us and some to sell.  I have no desire to create a bigger operation, but working with bees has its soothing aspects and its downright fascinating aspects.

Also, over the next couple of weeks Kate and I will sit down and plan our 2012 garden.  We now have all the beds installed, the orchard has begun to produce, albeit still at modest levels and our perennial beds have taken more or less to running themselves with the occasional weeding foray and bulb planting episodes.

My short burst workouts, which include four sets of resistance work in between the all out sessions of 30 seconds and one minute, have begun to show results, so this summer I plan to have more muscle which makes gardening both easier and more fun.

We have a fire pit, dug out fully by Mark last summer with a large metal fire ring and cooking grates ready to be installed come spring.  Once it’s in place we’ll have a nice area near the grandkids playhouse for twilight and nighttime fires, roasting marshmallows and wienies.

With Kate at home much more now, we’ll be able to take even better care of the yard.  Wisely, Kate let the grass cutting go a couple of summers ago, enabling her to concentrate on weeding and pruning, tasks, for some inexplicable and yet joyous reason (from my perspective), she enjoys.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Letters, Literature

The Past Is Never Dead

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Winter                                              First Moon of the New Year

Saw “Midnight in Paris.”  Not much of a movie goer, I’m more of a movie bringer, so I tend to see things late.  I don’t mind.  Kate and I picked this one for our movie night on Friday.

The professor teaching a class in contemporary art theory at the Walker, I took this class back in, what, March, gushed about this movie.  A post-modern film.   A love letter to the past and present of Paris.  A love story.

She was right.  This is a wonderful film, a film that challenges our notions of chronos, that says, up front, that the past is never dead; it’s not even past, it’s right here with us.  A Faulkner quote from Requiem for a Nun.

Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams play an engaged couple with very different priorities.  Hers is to live the rich life with a successful Hollywood screenwriter (Faulkner was one.)  and his is to find a garret in Paris and write his novel about a man who owns a nostalgia shop.

A gateway opens to his golden era, the Twenties, when a fancy car from that era stops near him, just after midnight, its passengers hailing him.  He get in and discovers he’s riding with   F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda.  Along the way he meets Hemingway and Picasso and Gertrude Stein.

Later, another gateway opens for Owen and Adriana, mistress to Picasso, Hemingway and Braque.  This takes them to Adriana’s golden era, the Belle Epoch. There she meets Gauguin, Lautrec and Degas.  She decides to stay behind.

Like Murakami’s 1Q84 I’m not sure if this is a great movie, but it might be.  It will need more time, more exposure.

It’s lightness almost allows the more profound aspects of its structure to slip away in a froth of Hollywood champagne bubbles.  The easy transit between Paris now and Paris then, given physical content, a sense of this is now actuality, occults the truth behind a glittering persona.

Any of us who read seriously, who attend to cinema for more than diversion, who haunt the   hallways of museums the world over, who wander ancient ruins or immerse ourselves in ancient languages or religions, who visit places like civil war battlefields or the Hudson Valley looking for the painters inspired by it or any well preserved neighborhood in any major city, those of us to take politics seriously know the truth of Faulkner’s observation.

When wandering the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia, the Khmer kings live again, their great monuments speaking their story in the language of stone and symbol.  Walk the streets of Ephesus in Turkey.  You stroll with the Romans who lived there.  Head over to the amphitheatre where Paul spoke to the Ephesians.  He’s still there.

Have you read War and Peace?  Then you’ve danced in 19th century Russia.  Steppenwolf?  You’ve been to the magic theatre.  Magic Mountain.  The life of a tuberculosis sanatorium.   Great Gatsby?  American Tragedy?   Romance of the Three Kingdoms?  You fought in the wars at the end of the Han Dynasty.  Monkeys Journey to the West?  A trek to India from the heart of Buddhist China.

When I translate Ovid, I encounter him.  Words he wrote, arranged, gave meaning and sense and poetics.  He is there on the page and I converse with him.

Walk the halls of any art museum and have an encounter.  Let’s say Rembrandt’s Lucretia at the MIA.  She cries in front of you, her heart broken and her spirit damaged beyond repair.  She bleeds, clutches the rope with her left hand.  All while remaining regal, somewhat aloof.  At this painting you stand in the room with her, at the end of the Roman monarchy occasioned by her grief and her violation while you also stand in Rembrandt’s studio, applying the last bit of paint, perhaps some varnish.  Remarkable, wouldn’t you say?