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.