Whoosh!

One day you’re young confused, angry at the world and everyone in it. You’re struggling to find your place socially, job-wise, artistically. All while suffering the slings and arrows of a rare, outrageous neurological disorder. 

Then a whole bunch of years whoosh by.

You may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful house?"
You may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?"
And you may ask yourself, "Am I right, am I wrong?"
And you may say to yourself, "My God, what have I done?”

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, into the silent water
Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground
~ Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

And then, one day, you wake up and you’re old, a little less confused but still angry at the world. Maybe anger is your/my normal state – sort of like resting bitch face? I’m no longer struggling with jobs and careers because I’m retired. Socially? I’ve accepted, after giving the Party Person/Social Butterfly persona a real solid go for decades, that I’m a bit of an introvert. Not completely but really!

Artistically? While, physically, I can’t do the big canvases anymore and working in clay isn’t logistically possible, I’m still finding ways to be visually creative. Having gallery showings would have been awesome but making art has never been about sales, attention, and adulation (though I surely wouldn’t have turned any of that shit away had it come a knockin’). It's always been about the work, the act of creativity. 

Picasso said, “We don't grow older, we grow riper.” I’m ripening like a pumpkin, left on the porch rail too long after Halloween. Interesting from a biologist's point of view perhaps. Otherwise? Ewwww.

And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.
~ Martin Amis, London Fields

Yes … well. I hope that I will soon begin to feel better, rejuvenated even, as I recover from this long-ass foot horror show. Meanwhile, there ain’t nothing that can be done about my lopsided visage (facial paralysis – aftereffect from brain surgeries) or my scalp that resembles the tracks in busy train yard more than a human head. Sure, sure, there’s cosmetic surgery and wigs but that shit costs $$$$$$ and $.
 
Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
~ Maya Angelou

I hope to hell I’ve matured, at least a little bit, over the years. I *think* I may have. I’m kind but not the nicest person you’ll ever meet. I have firm boundaries.

Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea/coffee/adult bev of choice – I wouldn’t want to be.

We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.
~ Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

Fun with Aging

Another day, another doctor appointment. This morning’s my annual with the throat doc/surgeon. Apparently these stupid, pesky tumors can cause issues with my vocal cords, give me breathing challenges (motherfucking *joy*), and make it more common for me to choke on my food or drink. What FUN!

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.
~ Jim Davis

In this time of Taylor Farms (and all their aliases) sparked volcanically explosive excreta, we gotta get our veggies in the safest possible places. I ALWAYS trust carrot cake!

FYI:

"Taylor Farms donated millions to President Trump, met privately with the White House the night the FDA identified their lettuce as the source of this outbreak, and then reportedly tried to distance themselves from this outbreak," Garcia said.  (source)

Pay off the Republicans – the Party in power – so you don’t have to spend an extra penny to make sure your product won’t poison people? Welcome to the plutocracy mes amis !

Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
~ Tom Stoppard

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
~ Mark Twain

Christopher Weyant 

So, being born physically old and presumably decrepit and then gradually unaging — becoming youthful and more healthy? As far as intelligence and emotional maturity go, how would this work? I don’t want to have the frailty of an 80-year-old with the emotional capacity of a toddler and the intelligence to match. I mean, fer fuck’s sake, we see how 80 with the brain of a tantrum toddler plays out on the news every day. It’s ugly, it stinks, and ruins everything it come in contact with.

Nope, if I’m gonna start out life old and age down to 18, I want all the knowledge, wisdom, and emotional intelligence an undamaged, smart 80-year-old might have and I want to retain that as I reverse age.

I want to have enough confidence in myself in my 20s to make bolder moves — to be less hobbled by fears and insecurities. e.g., GO to that band’s loft party where I only know the bass player. GO to the club to see that awesome band’s final show. STICK with that grad level ceramic chemistry class and see where it takes me. MOVE to Berlin to paint for a year.

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
~ H. H. Asquith

Matisse, The Italian Woman

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt 

I’m waiting for my “work of art” phase to kick in. Maybe I need another year?

Old age ain't no place for sissies.
~ Bette Davis

Satchel Paige asked “How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?”

Over the past six years my body’s been telling me I’m ancient. There are mummies in Egypt in better shape than me. Coco and Rocco’s cremated little corpses have more energy. I’ve had godforsaken, ramshackle-ass, raggedy zombies stop and tell me to get my shit together — “comb that hair! Stand up straight! Stop wearing sweatpants!” It’s embarrassing. Truly.

My mind’s telling me I’m still vibrant. Maybe more so than ever. Given my physical limitations, I’m as creative as I can be and I’m def continuing to learn new interesting shit all the time. So … brain good. Maybe this is dementia though, huh?

I’ve certainly embraced my don’t give a fuck years. Maybe “don’t give a fuck” would, more or less, define much of the second half of my life though. I’ve gained a modicum of diplomacy in my communications and delivery (SHUT UP, I have SO!) and also achieved the ability to create and hold personal boundaries, even when that makes me sad. Holding boundaries that make me sad is the adult version of eating all my peas because they’re good for me and will make me big and strong. //sigh//

I intend to live forever. So far so good.
~ Steven Wright

To Senescence or Not To Senescence

 Senescence is the biological process of aging – the gradual (hopefully gradual) breakdown of our physical bodies as we age and yield to the the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

 Maybe I'd like to give negligible senescence a try. I mean, if it's working for alligators, tortoises, naked mole rats, and some sharks ... well, it should be fine and dandy for me too. Right?

Negligible senescence is slow to trifling amounts of aging.

Galápagos giant tortoises can live well over 100 years. Charles Darwin’s pet Galápagos tortoise, Harriet, died in June 2006 at the Australia Zoo. Her estimated age was 176. Of course this may just be colorful zoo advertising folderol.  

Ocean quahog clams can live at least 200 years. That could be cool but your diet would consist of microscopic algae and you’d always on the run from rock crabs, sea stars, and random, thuggish gangs of cod. NO thank you!

We have our buddies the Greenland sharks, who I’ve mentioned before. Scientists were using a recently developed method of carbon-dating proteins. They found proteins within one shark’s eyes which put the subject anywhere from 272 to 512-years-old. 

You know what? I think even I would get tired of birthday cake after 500 years. I mean, I DO love my buttercream frosting – the more the better, and please don’t stint on the fondant!

The absolute winner in the age Olympics though is the Great Basin bristlecone pine.

Bristlecone pines are a small group of trees that reach an age believed by many scientists to be far greater than that of any other living organism known to man -- up to nearly 5,000 years.

 The oldest of these near prehistoric pines is a tree nicknamed Methuselah (after Methuselah, the longest-lived person in the Bible). Methuselah is located in the Inyo National Forest and sits in a remote area between California's Sierra Nevada range and the Nevada border.
~~~
The storied bristlecone pines grow in isolated groves at and just below the tree line in mountainous regions of California, Nevada and Colorado. These hardy trees thrive on adversity, living in harsh conditions and high elevation (about 10,000 feet) where little else survives.

Fighting the elements for millennia, bristlecone pines have been exposed to extreme cold temperatures, dry soils, high winds, and short growing seasons. Being in a category known to many scientists as extremeophiles the trees grow very slowly. (source) 

Dunno, the first thousand years might be okay. I could see zenning out, going all Alan Watts-like with the wild weather conditions. You know:

If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.

Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

I know me though – I’m not the most patient person on the planet (UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT!). My zen-like attitude might not make it past the first snowstorm – not if I’m standing out on the side of some damn mountain without a roof, four walls, fleece wrap, a hot toddy and NO WiFi. Fuck no! Yep, I’d make a lousy bristlecone pine. I can’t see me living for 5,000 years.

You know who I bet’s really into the idea of negligible senescence? Elon Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest of those nutbag billionaires. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to read that they were funding research into how to recreate the Greenland shark’s wickedly resilient organs and enhanced DNA repair mechanisms in humans – themselves specifically.

The world really doesn’t need them to live unnaturally long lives. DUH!

Windsday

Waddya know, for a lot of people, this is a three day weekend. Me? My job doesn’t give me regular days off – I snag ‘em when I can. What’s my gig? Recovery, staying alive and as strong and healthy as possible. Now that Plotkin and Doogie (I MUST remember to call him Dr. Miller to his face!!!) have cleared me for exercise, I’m getting back to it.

First things on the revised exercise routine list is buying shoes that fit better.

It’s normal for our feet to get bigger – wider and longer – as we age. It’s time for me to accept that I can no longer safely squeeze into a not-so-delicate size nine. //sigh// Lucky for me, metallic silver sneaks are back in fashion so I ordered up a pair. Also a pair of metallic silver penny loafers because – hey – these are very New Wave. Couldn’t you just see Debbie Harry or Ric Ocasek rocking a pair of these? Yes, yezzz, I'm still obsessed with the Silver Surfer. Dude had serious duende.

I don’t go out much AND I’m not a shoe whore so going up a size isn’t going to set me back. It’s annoying, though the online shopping was fun.

Meanwhile in Evil Family news, Stinky’s youngest, Lurch, at the inexperienced and dunderheaded age of 19 is now in the running to head up TikTok. Donnie Demento has gone full-blown Mob about it too. (Realistically, he was already there.)

"To all of those young people of TikTok, I saved TikTok, so you owe me big." 

The Trump family – they’re like the opioid pushing billionaire Sackler family only egregiously stupid, absolutely flagrant in their cruel criminality, profoundly thick and genetically ignorant. What’s desperately sad is that so many (i.e., ANY) people worship them, believing every lie.

Hunter S. Thompson was right:

America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

So was George Carlin: 

Think of how dumb the average American is. Now think half of them are dumber than that!

In completely unsurprising news, Ron DeHaas’s son, Thomas Wideman, has been busted and charged with four counts of using computers to commit a crime, three counts of child sex abuse, and one count of accosting children for immoral purposes. Wideman, 38, was caught in a sting op. He thought he was going to hook up with a 14 year old girl – a child – but was met by cops and detectives instead. 

Who is Ron DeHaas? He’s the co-founder of Covenant Eyes, an anti-porn internet accountability software program. It’s the one that Holy Mike Johnson uses with his son, ya know, to keep them both pure or some such shit. Daddy DeHaas naturally bailed out his pedo son. 

I’m at the point (okay, okay – I’ve been at this point for number of years) where if someone tells me they’re a Christian, I’m immediately on my guard. I assume they’re of the Trump brand of christianity. You know, white supremacist misogynists who hate all those who dare to be different in any way. People incapable of understanding or living by their very own rule book. Fer instance:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
~ Matthew 7:12

Walk it, don’t talk it. Know what these Republican christians are really good at? Creating atheists. 

Back to Wideman, a lot of child abusers were abused when they were young. I wonder who sexually abused him. Was it Daddy Covenant Eyes or Wideman’s biological father OR someone else entirely?