the great grocery cart shuffle race

The Great Grocery Cart Shuffle Race

Went with Kayak Woman to the grocery store today after release from hospital. I move slowly (loss of blood, etc.) and was headed toward the carts about 15 feet away. An older man in a similar condition as me was walking beside me. I said "I'll race you to the carts." He said, "Okay." Hahahaha! Two old dudes shuffling along, kind of like a turtle race. I'll be darned if he didn't beat me! I'm practicing up for the next event.

Transition

My son asked me long ago why as people get older they tend to get more religious. As an older person, 79 in a few months, I think I can now more adequately address that question. In my case, it is not so much that I am more religious in the sense of church attendance unless by church is meant the realm of Nature plus the actions of daily life, especially the latter. 

I am more open to the spiritual realm because my mind is less entangled with the affairs of the world. Sure, I know what is going on but am less attached to it. I am making a transition. I can feel my body letting go (though it is a good strong horse and seems to have some years left). 

I am fortunate that my mind has been capacious most of my life. But now that capaciousness is more my abiding place than is the world of daily human sociodrama. I am "in the world but not of the world." It is as if elders share a secret which is a secret only because it cannot be fully shared with younger persons as they flash past on their zip line of life.

I think older people get "more religious" or, in my terms, more spiritual or more capacious, because we are making a transition to other realms. We are shifting energies. We are dying before we die. We are continuing our opening of an awareness that new adventures await.

an old child

I don't want to be there. I want to be here. Done with the world's demands. Don't want to go take photos. I have taken enough photos. An old child, I like it here. No camera. No snap snap. No seeing anything but here. The world, other people, can go rolling on its way, their way. It does, they do, anyway. I am here, looking at the dry dirt cold back yard. Leafless tree. No birds singing. Just here. Cool wind encasing me. Done with it all. Just here. Content. 

the savage pride of old age

"… the savage pride of old age, which burns but refuses until the death to turn to ashes."
-- Nikos Kazantzakis

GeezTransCon

Geezer Transcendent Consciousness -- You no longer look at yourself through other people's eyes. If you do, you snort and laugh and move on. Your mind is in higher wider deeper realms.

Conversations With Your Thoughts

Just as in your day dreams and night dreams, you have conversations with your thoughts and images, so when preparing to die and as and when you die, you will hold such conversations.

Those in your attendance, still clinging to bodily form and social existence, will be both saddened and lose patience as you do so. They will say: Mom is not herself. She does not recognize me at times. She goes in and out. Dad sees people who are not there. He talks with them.

In your dying, you know now that all is a dream, that you are dreaming the world, your world. You move on, drop the body, continue dreaming. Whatever your thoughts are, you are. 

The Interflow of Capaciousness

Amongst gerontologists (those who study the elders), the last phase of life was, until recently, labelled as Old Age. The issues faced were those of decline. The crisis faced was that of Integrity versus Despair; one vacillated between keeping it all together and giving up. As gerontologists grow older, their perspective is changing. An additional "last phase" has been added: Gerotranscendence. A mouthful to be sure, but not too bad for a start. I prefer to call this phase of life "The Interflow of Capacioiusness." Let's just call it IC (analogous to I See). 

What goes on in the IC phase of existence? What does Interflow of Capaciousness mean? 

An identity shift occurs. As you approach the decline and the dropping of the physical body, you launch into another realm, the realm that generates the physical, the realm of the life force that the physical embodies. You progressively inhabit the cosmic body. The physical body and the social body are still meaningful yet you do not identify with them as much. The physical and the social are cherished and appreciated yet you have "laid up your treasures" in a wider deeper realm.

You begin to see yourself, to experience yourself more and more as a cosmic being with no bounds. You have, you are, great capaciousness, experiencing the interflow of all. In this phase of life, you are already launching into the Beyond which has always been and always will be Here Now. This is your new body which you graciously accept.

Senility

Senility is when you go about doing only that to which you are most inclined.
-- Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Disengaging

Gerontologists of yore made much of the findings that elders disengaged from social activities were more likely to die soon. Hence older relatives should be forced into eternal bingo games, group outings and such. They did not look at the other side of their correlational findings -- elders ready to move on (a natural process) and who were in fact making the consciousness transition had no interest in being dragged back into societal games. Something much more interesting was happening.

On being a Geezer (or Geezelle)

On being a Geezer (or Geezelle) --

Find something physical to do.
The body wants to play, even until the last breath.

Flog your mind away from your past.
Be now, right now, your fullest intent.
For now will almost immediately be the past.

Aspiration does not mean to breathe out your ass.
It means to breathe (spire) to your highest
before your ex-spire-ation.

Get on it!

Elder

Elder: 
No longer a Star in the world,
more like the Moon reflecting
the Radiance of the Sun.

a sunny afternoon

What would be left behind when the rapture called Death took him? Some clothes, books, a body for disposal, tools (camera, computer, kindle), pages on Amazon and FB, a passing memory, a genealogy line. Lint in a side pocket of the Cosmos. He laughed. 

Geezer Yoga

Cutting one's toenails.

Prayer for the Grace to Age Well

When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibres of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance
and bear me away within yourself.
-- Teilhard de Chardin

this far

I enjoy being a 76 year old sitting in a chair outside beneath the shade of a tree. No. Enjoy is not the word. Quiet acceptance. Wondering that I made it this far. "Far" is not right either. No sense of linear time, only memory arising in the now. No clouds in the blue depths of heaven. Going nowhere. Nothing doing. My Zen name.

encounter

Talked with an older (84) gentleman downtown this morning. He was sitting there looking a little sad, evidently mulling something over in deeper realms. "What's up?" I asked. His eyes slowly took on life as he returned from whatever scenario he had been contemplating.

"I don't remember things the way I used to," he said. "And I trip over things at home and fall down. My feet are too big, I guess." I remained quiet and listened. "My mother fell when she got older, broke her shoulder, and stayed on the floor from 9 at night until 1 in the afternoon the next day when someone came to check on her."

He looked troubled. "I might have to go live with one of my children."  He named their locations, the nearest one in Phoenix. "Where do you want to live?" I asked. "Flagstaff," he immediately replied. We both laughed.

He was looking more chipper. "They are all so busy," he said and began telling me of the things his children were all involved in. "Would you have a room?" I asked. "Oh yes." "But you would be alone." "Yes," he said. "And you live alone now." He nodded.

He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. "One of my sons gave me this," he said. "I keep it with me in case I fall down. I can call 911." "How about one of those things you can wear around your neck and push a button?" I asked. "They cost $30 a month," he said.

By that time he was more animated and lively. "One of my grandsons bought me a computer and we talk on that Skype. He can see my keyboard and he tells me how to operate it." "Is it a laptop?" I asked. "Yes." "Well maybe you can wear it hanging around your neck and Skype him if you fall down." We both laughed.

We got up and he walked with me a little way. "What they say is true." I said. "Old age is not for sissies." "Physically it isn't," he said, "I hope your day is good." "Blessings to you," I said. We went our separate ways.

learning how to die

"Keep one-point" is the most powerful and most essential practice taught me by a martial art teacher (Koichi Tohei). Keeping one-point has served me through my life and is now serving me as I continue learning how to die.

The one-point or center in the body is two to three inches below the navel and deep inside. One moves from one-point. This allows one to get out of the head chatter, out of entangling emotion, out of fabricated illusion and move with full attentiveness and clarity through life.

But how about through death? One does not want to stay attached to one's body. Where then shall one keep one's one-point? Where shall one center oneself?

I practice the answer to this question even now. I center in the Formless that is producing this form. Rather than being a body that is embodying the Life Force, I practice being the Life Force that is embodying. In other words, I am practicing dying before I die. I identify with the Formless rather than the form.

Where is my one-point? I center in the vastness that produces all that is. I hear comforting laughter and feel warmth and peace. Centering and opening. No attachment. Boundless capaciousness. As Stephen Levine put it, a spiritual being having physical experiences rather than a physical being having spiritual experiences.

older

I continue getting messages that I am an older person: -- My body tells me so. -- Cars stop for me and let me cross the street. -- Younger folk hold doors open for me. -- Yes, yes, I know. You are as young as you feel and all that jazz. Eternal youth is required. Well, forget that! I am enjoying the graciousness of growing older. Mystery. New outlook. Release. Laughter at the decaying process as I move toward corpse and skeleton. Gone, darling! Gone! Already on the other side while walking here and there.

THE HORROR

Willing to endure THE HORROR of my more liberal friends, I walked over to Walmart today (a few miles from my home) and WENT INSIDE! To multiply the horror and potential scorn, I bought the WalMart brand of INSTANT COFFEE. 

It has excellent reviews on the web and costs $4.48 cents for 8 oz (a couple hundred cups?) compared to the Starbucks instant coffee I have been drinking costing $8 for 8 servings. Plus Starbucks has all that extra packaging -- a package for each serving plus the main package. 

To compound the horror, I went immediately to a chain restaurant and consumed a slab of cherry pie with ice cream. I then walked the long miles home rejoicing.

retirement

I am invited to speak to a class on “Aging In America” at the university today. They are focusing on the “living environments” of us geezers. I am to speak on the living environment of retirement. The invitation of course prompted some thoughts.

What is retirement? Seems as if I should know what that is if I am going to talk about it. The more prosaic meaning is that one leaves the work arena. In this society, work means the making of money for oneself and others. One does this by selling one’s time-space and attentional energy to others. Retirement means that one is no longer doing this. 

If one would devote one’s time-space and attentional energy to the contracted services anyway, as one’s outflow of being, one is not working. One is being paid for who one is. Retirement is a term of no consequence. One is oneself. Sometimes money comes. Sometimes it doesn’t. 

Of course one can always sell oneself into slavery and perform duties not at the core of one’s being for money. Prostitution however exacts its price. 

My two major “jobs” in my life have been (and are): (1) the absorbing of information, putting it into simpler terms, and passing on the info to others, and (2) listening deeply to people caught in confusion and assisting them in becoming unconfused. This is what I do. This is who I am. Sometimes I have received money for it. Sometimes I have not. No retirement here. One cannot retire from the essence of one’s being.

What will I say to the class today? I do not know. I do not speak from notes. What I might say is that retirement means that one’s time-space and attentional energy are no longer within the structural frame of someone else’s devising. One can then do things like sit in the afternoon sun and watch a wasp stretch and flex itself, wash and groom its little face and its antenna, and then fly away.

But heck, I have always done that anyway. I suppose I have always been retired. What is that old joke? "Retired? I was never tired in the first place!"

cellphone

The pleasures of being a Geezer: I lose track of my cellphone for days at a time (it's usually discovered in my backpack). When I finally remember I have such a device, I retrieve it and no one has called. Blessed silence. Almost as good as having my hearing aids out.

slay bells

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." (Job 13:15) That's the authorized orthodox version. My version seems more true to reality: "Even as he slays me, I will trust in him."

full circle

"Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come: an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into the world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us, like the substance of a dream." Joseph Campbell

chair dozing

Some reasons we elders doze in chairs:

It just happens.

Don't want to walk all the way to the bed.

Bed is for the invalid and one still feels valid.

Can awaken and take up that book where one left off.

Practice.

The unrelenting pull of gravity.

Exhausted from putting on clothes and shoes.

Resting one's eyes for a moment.

Blissful silence due to hearing aids out.

Memories.

Geezer Alert

Dust to Dust: Eco-friendly burials catch on in US 
 

one big hospice

the earth is one big hospice -- nurse! nurse! where are my drugs? -- right here! right here! you have only one -- it's called your life -- hahahahahahaha!!!

the art of geezer walking

Since I am a bonafide Geezer, having been dubbed this by an irate man some time ago, I feel that I am qualified to make some remarks on the art of Geezer walking. 

You can be a Geezer regardless of your age. One requirement is that you not take yourself too seriously. So most anyone can do the Geezer walk.

Some guidelines (no rules; Geezers do not care for rules nor abide by them) are:

·      Choose asphalt over concrete, dirt over asphalt. It’s easier to let flowers bloom in your footsteps with dirt, though concrete may need it more.

·      Choose neighborhood streets over traffic stream streets. With traffic stream streets, it is too easy to get irritated at the constant engine roar and tire-whir noise and/or fall into pity and depression for all those poor folk locked away in their mobile cubicles. Of course, if you are a Zen Marine, you will welcome this opportunity to practice deep meditation.

·      Choose back alleys over neighborhood streets. Man! The sights you see!

·      Take a new route, rather than an old route. The reasons are obvious.

·      Always return a different way. Walk the unexpected, unpredictable.

·      Take shortcuts, even though they are longer.

·      Stay open to change. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters are everywhere. Pick them up, put them in your walking savings jar.

·      Notice side paths (human game trails) and follow them. Most of them are short cuts. All lead to interesting places.

·      Keep a soft-eyed open gaze. You see more; are perceived as less a threat or challenge; get in less trouble.

·      Keep your head up and look around. No head bouncing. When your head bounces, your visual world bounces. Keep an even keel.

·      No marching. Amble. Amble fast or amble slow, but amble. Since you are amble-atory, you are less likely to need an amble-ance.

·      Stop, look, and listen. At any time. For as long as you care to.

·      If you have a watch, leave it at home. You will get there when you get there. And you will never get there since you are always here.

·      Carry a teeny notebook to record your teeny thoughts. That’s how this guideline you are reading was formed.

Well, that’s way too many guidelines.

Just go out there and walk around.

caregiver

As we age, we must take care of the dying one we are. Neither ignore it nor succumb to its every demand. We see its existence and respond to its slow and subtle and sudden decay. We soothe its fears and give it what nourishment it will take in. It in turn imparts its wisdom to the busy flesh we are. We laugh together in this hospice called Life.

boundaries and memory

I don't remember why I posted this.
Oh yeah, the malevolence of doorways.

how is it being retired?

"And so how is retirement?" they ask.

And I can see in the eyes of some that they have already answered the question -- that it is a fate worse than death, that one has lost one's true and real identity -- the job that one holds, and is cast off into a vast and desolate wasteland to wander thirstily in a scape inhabited by wearers of white socks and plaid coats desperately seeking jobs as Walmart greeters.

Actually, I retired long ago, while I was still "gainfully employed" as they say. 

In thinking on it, I retired in 1974, when a university offered me tenure. I took the offer as a sign that I HAD MADE IT, refused tenure, and leaped into active retirement in which I have

·      driven an 18-wheeler

·      raised and sold cucumbers to a pickle factory

·      organized, edited, and published a community magazine

·      stocked the shelves of a university bookstore

·      helped gather and publish in useful form statewide criminal justice data

·      performed weddings, christenings, and ministered

·      been a houseparent for 6 teen boys with middle fingers raised to the entire universe

·      developed and taught wellness courses for a medical school

·      taught martial arts

·      bagged potato eyes in a basement inhabited by 7 eye-cutting women and a blaring country-western radio

·      shot pistol and run through the night with members of a peace officer association

·      become acquainted with many strong and good-hearted Native American folk

·      taught wellness courses for Native American nations

·      been executive director for a two-county behavioral health center

·      been chief psychologist for a 4-county behavioral health system

·      been clinical director of a 4-community behavioral health system

·      been psychologist for a university employee assistance program

·      written a few books

·      done the Imogene Pass "grueling" annual trek three times

·      gotten married and divorced twice

·      fathered two magnificent children, both warriors and loving beings

·      hiked a large number of the trails of northern Arizona

·      read ten zillion books

·      and so on

So when I'm asked how is retirement, I usually reply, "I'm having the best time of my life!" and let it go at that. Sometimes I say, "Re-tired? I was never tired in the first place"

the art of geezer walking

Since I am a bonafide Geezer, having been dubbed this by an irate man some time ago, I feel that I am qualified to make some remarks on the art of Geezer walking.

You can be a Geezer regardless of your age. One requirement is that you not take yourself too seriously. So most anyone can do the Geezer walk.

Some guidelines (no rules; Geezers do not care for rules nor abide by them) are: 

·      Choose asphalt over concrete, dirt over asphalt. (It’s easier to let flowers bloom in your footsteps with dirt, though concrete may need it more.)

·      Choose neighborhood streets over traffic stream streets. With traffic stream streets, it is too easy to get irritated at the constant engine roar and tire-whir noise and/or fall into pity and depression for all those poor folk locked away in their mobile cubicles. Of course, if you are a Zen Marine, you will welcome this opportunity to practice deep meditation. 

·      Choose back alleys over neighborhood streets. Man! The sights you see! 

·      Take a new route, rather than an old route. The reasons are obvious. 

·      Always return a different way. Walk the unexpected, unpredictable. 

·      Take shortcuts, even though they are longer. 

·      Stay open to change. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters are everywhere. Pick them up, put them in your walking savings jar. 

·      Notice side paths (human game trails) and follow them. Most of them are short cuts. All lead to interesting places. 

·      Keep a soft-eyed open gaze. You see more; are perceived as less a threat or challenge; get in less trouble. 

·      Keep your head up and look around. No head bouncing. When your head bounces, your visual world bounces. Keep an even keel. 

·      No marching. Amble. Amble fast or amble slow, but amble. Since you are amble-atory, you are less likely to need an amble-ance. 

·      Stop, look, and listen. At any time. For as long as you care to. 

·      If you have a watch, leave it at home. You will get there when you get there. And you will never get there since you are always here. 

·      Carry a teeny notebook to record your teeny thoughts. That’s how this guideline you are reading was formed.

Well, that’s way too many guidelines.

Just go out there and walk around.