Quartet (2012)–A New Geriatric Genre?

Is it me, or are there more movies showing up on the big screen catering to the social security set?  I’m sure there’s plenty of septuagenarian actors anxious for work, but I’m also hoping Hollywood is finally targeting us folks living in the 55+ demographic landscape.  That would be wonderful, since I’m awful tired of watching flicks for kids, especially when adolescence ends at 45 nowadays  I qualify for social security at the end of year, and only expect to get older, so I’m hoping there will be a boom in this geriatric genre.

The other night, four of us, three 61 year-olds, and a 55 year-old youngster in tow, went to see Quartet about life in a retirement home for musicians and singers put out to pasture. It stars Maggie Smith (78), Tom Courtenay (75), Billy Connolly (70) and Pauline Collins (72), four former opera singers separated in youth but thrown together in old age.  Quartet is advertised as a heartwarming and uplifting film about old age.  That’s exactly what I got out of it too, until I started talking to my friends who saw it with me.  Then it made me think about films for and about the old.

When my friend Annie expressed disappointment I was surprised.  I had been so completely entertained.  Annie thought it was morbid and felt some of the characterization was undignified.  Anne and Janis did like the film, and both had laughed heartily throughout the show.  That night I laid awake thinking about Annie’s comments.  Was it the movie she didn’t like, or being reminded of getting old?

Quartet also featured many characters played by real retired musicians and singers, and during the credits, we were shown photos of these people as they look now and when they were young.  That was both lovely, and shocking.  We all get old, and we must accept and embrace the reality of being old, but time melts youthful faces into distortions, even grotesque masks of our former features.  And I can see how Annie would think this would be morbid.  My friends and I saw Quartet on a Tuesday night, and there exactly 10 people in the audience, none younger than 55.  I doubt even on a busy night if Quartet attracts many young people.  It’s hard to promote our sunset years as thrilling movie fare.

Mary Pols at Time Magazine was less than enthusiastic about Quartet, calling the film “terribly cloying and cutesy.”  Now, I can buy that, but isn’t that true of most uplifting movies of our time.  We don’t like realistic movies.  We cover everything with a patina of cutesy.  Even when we’re critical, it’s usually only with the sharpness of satire that’s merely funny.  Quartet portrays little realism about getting old.  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a bit more informative.  I wait to see if Amour goes deeper into the subject.  I was entertained by Quartet, but disappointed it wasn’t insightful.  I watch these geriatric genre films hoping to learn how to deal with getting old.  But that can’t be a real criticism because films are seldom inspirational. 

The retired citizens of Quarter live in Beecham House, a humongous manor house, beautifully restored, set against a magnificent English countryside.  Nobody suffers neglect, bedsores or even loneliness.  This is geezer nirvana.  The aged here spend their days creating music and having a rather good ole time.  Quartet is like a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical, with the old folks putting on a show to make dough to keep the joint going.  Unless everyone at the grand performance paid $50,000 for their tickets I can’t imagine how anyone would think this as a realistic view of retirement living.  But then, are movies targeted at the youthful end of the demographic chart selling a realistic view of life either?  No, but we all grow up hoping life will be like the movies, so is it all that strange to have Hollywood sell us fantasies about life after 60?  The trouble is, I now feel cheated by fantasies I had in the first third of life about the second third of life.  So Hollywood, or wherever they make British movies, I can’t speak for the other old dudes , but I don’t want fantasies about my final third.

This brings up the question:  If we’re old and getting older, do we want films that fool us about our future or grittily tell it like it is?  Anyone who has had to care for parents with dementia or breaking bodies has seen a realist view of their future.  Do we really want to pay $10 to see a two hour recreation of dismal living?  On the other hand, do we want to buy some Santa Claus version of what our “Golden Years” should be?

Clint Eastwood has the right feel in Grand Torino (2008) and Trouble with the Curve (2012).  Too often Hollywood wants us to think of the elderly as cute codgers, like in Cocoon (1985) and Going in Style (1979) where old people are shown as loveably, but goofy and eccentric, not average people inhabiting decaying bodies and minds.

Part of the problem is how the young see the old.  Young people don’t like the old acting young.  I have to admit I have that prejudice too.  Getting old doesn’t really change our sense of self all that much.  How often have you heard granny or granddad say they felt like 19 on the inside?  We want old people to act old, to be dignified, to dress conservative, to be neither seen or heard, to sit in their retirement rooms and wait quietly to die.  A good example of this is again from the Time review by Mary Pols where she describes character she really dislikes:

I’ve saved the character I like the least for last. Wilf (Billy Connolly) is the resident dirty old man of Beecham House, a title no one would dare challenge him for, unless they had an actual court record. Wilf hits on everyone, including Cissy, whose “tits” he remarks on while eating his toast, and most persistently on the very tolerant director of Beecham House, Dr. Lucy Cogan (Sheridan Smith). The character is included without commentary and his grossness is treated entirely as comic. Being a pervert is his only contribution to the story. He makes Norman, the resident horn dog of the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel seem a model of restraint in comparison. Dr. Cogan would have done the world a favor if she kneed him in the groin. But not at Beecham House, where everyone gamely gums their bread and jam and gets a good chuckle out of old Wilf. Obviously Hoffman and writer Ronald Harwood have never been groped by anyone old enough to be their grandfather.

Wilf does flirt constantly with all the women in this film, young and old, but I don’t remember a single scene of him groping anyone.  He does try to snake his arm around the doctor once, which seemed rather chase.  I liked the Wilf character because he did maintain his old self.  Sure he was a flirt, and even a dirty old man, but it was his way of keeping a stiff upper lip while going down with the ship.  We see Wilf experience one scene of physical weakness, an attack of dizziness.  Sure he propositions all the women, but they don’t take him serious, and I doubt he expects them too either.  And does any character or member of the audience believe he can live up to his boasts given the chance?  No, Wilf is trying to act like nothing has happened, that he isn’t different.  He’s pretending he can still get it up.  I don’t even think he’s delusional.  It’s his way of not being a downer.  He doesn’t want people’s pity.  It’s an act that keeps him from withdrawing from the world.

I know that’s not realistic, but don’t we all put a positive spin on our lives from birth?  Don’t we all live with endless hopes and desires?  If we’re going to be hung, don’t want we want to walk up the gallows stairs with some dignity?  Why bitch and moan about getting wrinkled, why whine about droopy dicks and tits, why cry over failing bodies, or become depressed over forgetting a lifetime of facts.  Sure it sucks to live in pain from a body becoming undone by decay but must we wallow in pity and tears?   Why are we only beautiful when we’re young?  Why is life only worthwhile when our bodies are ascending?  Isn’t life just as existential on their decline?

That’s what I want from these films about getting old.  I want them to be charm schools on how we should act when we get wrinkled, frail, forgetful and forgotten. 

JWH – 2/9/13

Rejuvenation Delusions–Searching for the Fountain of Youth

This is one of those essays I occasionally write that get no hits.  Usually I don’t even publish them to the blog.  It’s a Sunday night and I’m tired.  I write this trying to capture how I feel, which is old, but how does one put that into words?  When I was young and met old people trying to recapture their youth I thought they were pathetic.   I knew they wanted young bodies and youthful vitality, but I didn’t know how it felt to have an old body or what it meant to be old.  I heartlessly felt no empathy for them, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

My two days of freedom from work are about over, and I feel depressed that I have only three hours to accomplished something but I’m too tired to do anything other than to write this.  I saw two tragic romantic movies this weekend, Anna Karenina and The Royal Affair – so I think I’ve overdosed on watching beautiful people leading passionate young lives, which makes me feel even older and more worn out than I actually am.

But you know what the weird thing is?  My mind is just as ambitious as ever.  The pain in my back and legs grows as I stand or walk, and I’m only good for about ten minutes of activity, but I daydream of hiking the Appalachian Trail.  My dick has reached those hilarious ED years but it still has an ambitious role in my idle thoughts, sort of like daydreaming what you’d do if you won the $500 million dollar lottery.  In other words, why should I think critically of people looking for the fountain of youth at the end of a plastic surgeon’s scalpel.  Nor should I think “dinosaur rock” when I see that The Rolling Stones and The Who touring again.

Like George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young,” because you REALLY don’t know what the hell he meant until you get old.

That’s the vexing thing about life, we all  keep trying to be young way beyond our youth.  None of us want to just give up and die.  I’m reminded of a Vaughn Bode underground comic I read back in the 1970s, about a little cartoon creature that had been captured by an enemy who cut off his arms and legs, poked out his eyes, and left him in a dungeon.  In the final panel the little disfigured cartoon creature whispered to his fellow prisoner, “I’m going to escape when they go to sleep.”  In other words, we don’t give up no matter how pathetic and wrinkled we get.  Just pass the Viagra, Botox and amphetamines – we’re all Joe Gideon from All That Jazz until our hearts blow a gasket.

Now, is that pathetic or heroic?

You know what though?  I’m pretty sure I’ve written this all before, maybe even using the same words, quotes and similes, but my old fucking mind thinks its new.  Ha-ha.  Maybe we lose our memories so won’t just give up in frustration!

I still can’t capture in words what it means to feel old but think young, other than to say, “Tomorrow I’m going to buy an electric guitar and become another 1965 Bob Dylan,” or maybe I’ll join NASA and convince them geezers belong on Mars.  Or maybe I’ll just write a book about a 61-year-old ex-astronaut who buys an electric guitar to become a rock star.

I never did like that crazy witch Scarlett O’Hara, but she did have it right, “Tomorrow is another day.”

[Wow, I still have 90 minutes of weekend freedom to do something still.]

JWH – 12/9/12

The Circle of Life–Coming Back to Where We Started

My sister Becky once remarked that we started off life living pretty much in one room, and then we spread into several rooms as we become toddlers, and then out of the house as we become kids, then off to school to find our group friends, and slowly we travel further and further from home, making more and more friends, but then as we get older, we travel less, and we start having fewer friends, and then we start staying in our house all the time, and finally we end up in one room again.

If you live long enough you end up back in a crib with people changing your diapers.

My friend Peggy has started hanging out with other people in their sixties, at a dance club that’s a lot like a high school hangout.  Her friends have created a new subculture around old tunes and dances they learned in their teens. 

Many older people I know have begun reconnecting with childhood friends and schoolmates through Facebook.  We have an urge to return to friendship groups like we had in K-12.

Nostalgia means returning home.  I’ve reached an age when my peers look backwards.

I’ve also noticed something else about getting older – people want less from life.  Back in high school and college we all had such big ambitions about what we wanted to do when we grew up.  Now we want less and less.  We want to retire.  We often return to the hobbies we loved while growing up.

I’m reading books and watching television with the same passion I had in junior high.  And my passion for new music is much like I felt for music in the 1960s.  I listen to it alone in my room just like I did in 1965, and find the same immense pleasure  I once did.  Somehow I didn’t pass back through the phase of listening in groups of friends getting stoned.

I do feel somewhat different from other friends my own age – I like new music, and they dwell on the oldies, or stuff that sounds like it could have been on the charts in 1961-1969.  I know this will sound sacrilegious, but listening to The Killers at the moment is more meaningful than replaying The Buffalo Springfield.  I don’t think none of us are the same, or can become who we were, but so many of us are swimming towards the past like lemmings.

My older friends divide into two distinct groups:  those with children and those without.  The ones with children and grand children follow a different circle of life than those childless.  When I talk to friends with children, our conversations often remind me of talking to my parents and grandparents.  Talking to my friends without kids, often feels like we’re still back in tenth grade.

My wife Susan, and some of my other lady friends have gotten into watching TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s again.  I think we all are drawn to different aspects of the past we loved so dearly.  Or does watching old shows just recreate old feelings?

In my book clubs, we often talk about our favorite books, movies and TV shows from childhood.  All of us Baby boomers have commonality even though we’re all extremely different.  We will relive the 1960s one day at a time, each a 50th anniversary.

And getting old means becoming weak again like a child.  I can no longer lift and do things I once did.  Eventually we’ll get too old to drive, and finally we’ll get too old to even take care of ourselves.  Dementia and Alzheimer’s is like evolving mentally backwards.

Even sex seems to diminish, like we’re returning to a kind of re-virginal state.

It’s also hard to befriend people in a different part of the circle of life.  When we’re kids we play with other kids, when we’re teens, we hang out in gangs of teenagers, when we move away from home, we hang out with other single people, when we get married we hang out with other married people, when we have kids, we hang out with other people with kids.

I’m not old yet, but I already feel the urge to fly south to live in a 55 Plus community.

Should I fight this urge?  Or should I just go with the flow?  Do I have a choice?

If you’re around my age, 60, are you feeling this too?

JWH – 10/8/12

What 12 Lessons About Life Would You Teach Your Younger Self If You Had A Time Machine?

Nobody likes taking advice from other people. 

What if you could get advice from an older, wiser version of yourself?  Would you take it?  What if you had a time machine and could travel back to visit your younger self and spend one day to help him or her prepare for the future?  Would your younger self listen and learn?

What advice would you give you?  How would you be convincing.  What proof could you bring?

There are two ways to approach this problem.  First, you could teach yourself how to get more of what you wanted in this life with hindsight, or you could convince yourself that you should be a totally different person, a better person.  If you collected rare baseball cards you could tell yourself how to get the rarest ones for your future self.  Or, you could tell your younger self, don’t waste a lifetime on collecting baseball cards, just play a lot of baseball.

As much as I’ve enjoyed my life, as much as I love my wife and friends, I have never been the person I wanted to be because of introverted habits and laziness.  I would go back and try to convince my younger self to become a different person knowing full well it would erase me and my current life.

If you had a time machine and could spend a day with a younger self, what age would you target?  Why?  What would you say?

I’d go back to 1964 when I turned 13, when I understood science fiction.  I think Jim-13 could understand Jim-60 and time travel.

Here’s what I’d try to teach Jim-13.

1. Give up my addiction to science fiction.  I have a life-long addiction to fantasy that I overindulge with books, television and movies.  I’d work very hard to convince my younger self to never look at television again, and to promise to read no more than one novel a month.  I’d try to convince him to read more non-fiction and classics.  I’d tell him when he did read SF, to find and read the very best science fiction, but no more than four SF books a year.  I’d try to convince him to seek out SF books that taught him more about reality and not use science fiction to escape reality.
2. Study science and mathematics.  I wouldn’t try to help my younger self get rich by telling him to buy key stocks, or which horses or football teams to bet on.   I’d try to teach him that the key to a good life is working hard at something you love and that being a scientist is probably the best way to spend a lifetime.
3. Give up junk food, eat healthy, and exercise.   I was an active kid, and skinny until after I got married, but I have an addictive personality and I ate lots of junk food.  Seeing Jim-60 weighing 234 pounds would probably be pretty convincing evidence.
4. Don’t get involved with drugs.  Hey, I grew up in the 1960s, so that will be a hard lesson to teach.  I might tell him to experiment under certain social conditions, but convince Jim-13 that drugs will waste a lot of time and money.
5. Pay more attention to other people.  I’ve always been introverted, self-centered and egocentric.   I’d try to convince Jim-13 that getting out of his head and focusing on what’s going on in other people’s heads will lead to more social success and a richer life.
6. Warn him about sex.  Hey, he’s 13.  I’d try to convince him that all those gazillion hours of sex fantasies won’t get him laid.  I’d try to teach him not to think about what he wanted but learn to observe women and study what they wanted.  I’d tell him, yes, all the girls have pussies, but the organ you really want to lust after is brains.  I’d tell him to learn to dance.
7. Take good notes.  I’d try very hard to teach Jim-13 to keep a journal, studying the art of writing as deeply as possible, learn to draw and sketch, and take one photo a day.
8. Find ways to make money and save it.  I’d teach him working provides social contacts and access to mentors, and that saving money will mean freedom to do more.  I tell him that easy money from time travel tips is wrong and a waste of time.
9. Finish school as fast as possible and get into college as soon as you can.  I’d convince Jim-13 that it’s very important to become independent as soon as possible and college is one way to do that.   Try to get in by 16.
10. Move in with your grandmother.  My parents were alcoholics and at age 13 I was about to go through some very bad years.  If I could have gotten away from them it really would have helped me tremendously.  And my grandmother managed an apartment building in her old age, and could have used the help.  If I could have grown up living in one place and had a stable life for junior high and high school I would have been a much different person.  I’d tell my younger self to not leave Miami until after college – to even get into the University of Miami for college.  Maybe even study marine biology.  I’d also advise him to leave for grad school and to study physics or astronomy then.
11. Find mentors.  I think the key to success is to start work young and find mentors that can help you understand the game in any situation.
12. Learn to focus and work hard.   I’d tell Jim-13 to push himself to work a little harder at his favorite projects each day.  To learned to focus his concentration a little harder on every task each day.   If you can spend 30 minutes focused on learning calculus one day, try for 31 the next.  If you can grind on a telescope mirror for 2 hours on one day, try for 2 hours and 5 minutes the next.  If you can run four miles one day, try for 4.1 the next.  Just keep pushing your body and mind to go further.

I know this is a fantasy and time travel isn’t possible. But playing this little thought experiment is very educational. I can always pretend its advice for Jim-13 from Jim-60, but it could be advice for Jim-80 to me at this moment.

But if this little fantasy was possible it would have played out different than what I wanted.

Convincing my younger self of all of this would be hard.  If I could print out all my blog posts into a book, I give him that.  I might bring an iPad to show him how far out technology gets.  I might bring him the book Replay by Ken Grimwood.  I might bring him a photo album of my life. 

I was a bullheaded kid, so I’m not sure I could have convinced him of anything.

I’m pretty sure he would have demanded that Jim-60 stay in 1964 so he, Jim-13 could return in the time machine to 2012.

I would have agreed.

JWH – 8/4/12

Is Cynicism a Side-Effect of Aging? – The Mark Twain Syndrome

Samuel Clemens, known famously as Mark Twain, became extremely bitter and pessimistic about the human race as he got older.  I’m 60 and I’m starting to feel I’ve caught a touch of pessimism myself, so I’m wondering if I’m developing the Mark Twain Syndrome?  And will I get more negative as the years pile up?

Is cynicism a side-effect of aging?

Now Twain had a lot of reasons to feel depressed and bitter.  His wife, and two of his three daughters, died before he did.  He made fortunes and lost them.  He ran up staggering debt.   In his old age he had to constantly tour the world giving talks so he could honorably pay off his creditors.  Plus he saw a lot of the world that he just didn’t like, and he felt he had good reasons to think humans were a nasty species.  Twain died in 1910, so he never knew the horrors of the 20th century, but the vicious satirical stories he wrote in his later years feel spot on to modern readers.

I would think anyone following the highly polarized politics of the 2012 presidential election would feel depressed about our political system.  I would think anyone studying how humans treat the environment and our fellow creatures would feel gloomy about the Earth.  I would think anyone comparing the growing greed of the rich versus the expanding misery of the poor would feel doomed over the fate of mankind.  It’s hard not to believe that homo sapiens aren’t going to use up every last resource on this planet and never feel guilty.

How can you have faith in Congress when the national debt grows and all they can talk about is tax cuts?  How can feel good about America when one party stonewalls the other for four years in hopes of winning the next election?  When did serving the party become more important than serving the country?

Our current economic calamity is due to a man-made economic catastrophe.  Billions were stolen but no one was ever put on trial.  And the rich are spending billions to get a President in office so they can go back to business as usual.

I can’t help but believe that a perfect storm of national collapse is brewing.  Is the U.S. in decline like the Roman and British empires were long ago?

Here some of the factors:

• Growing economic chaos
• World-wide shift to fundamental religious thinking
• Global warming
• Diseases becoming immune to our medicines
• Population growth
• Dwindling resources
• Relentless pollution
• Accelerating species extinctions
• Uncontrolled debt
• Political polarization
• Aging population
• Growing segment of population that’s not in labor force
• Escalating crime and corruption around the world
• Rising healthcare costs
• Rising food costs

Now, do I dwell on all of that because I’m getting older?  If I was young would I feel that all of those issues were just problems to be easily solved?  I don’t know.  It’s not like I want to walk around with a sandwich sign proclaiming “The End is Near” but I feel like I’m on a fast train and the brakes just went out.  Is that feeling caused by getting older?

How do you know when things are bad or when you’re just feeling bad and think civilization is in decline?

Conversely, when I read about developments in science, technology, medicine, I feel positive and my thoughts about the future are uplifted.  Science is the one constant positive – but most people reject science.  What makes me feel good makes other people feel bad.

When I was young and read about Mark Twain I hoped I’d never become bitter and negative like he did.  Even now I try to stay positive.  But its not easy.  Oh, if I keep busy and ignore the problems I’m as happy as a two-year-old with a box of cookies.  And I tend to think that’s how most folks handles the problem–they eat more cookies.

When I was young, growing up with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs, I assumed we’d have permanent bases on the Moon and Mars by now, and men and women would have explored the entire solar system.  In my teens, I felt before I died engineers would be drawing up plans interstellar spacecraft.  Maybe not manned ones, but at least for interstellar robotic explorers.  I think part of my disappointed about getting old is none of this has happened.

I’ve read enough history to know that the present has always been on the tipping point of chaos.  I should feel confident that we’ll continue to bumble though.  But I’ve also read enough history to know that nations rise and fall, and that all over the globe there are sites where people live who think about their country’s former glory.  We revel is the decline of communism, but who is to say capitalism will last?  Personally, I think free market capitalism will fail under overpopulation.  We have over 12 million people defined as unemployed, but we have over 87 million people not employed, or considered unemployable.  This population is over 16, not in jail or in military service that doesn’t work.  They are retired, mentally or physically can’t work, gave up trying to find work, or won’t work.  Less than half the U.S. population has jobs and they must fund the living expenses for the entire population.  Capitalism isn’t creating enough jobs.  It’s worse in other countries.

And the people who are working and paying taxes want to pay less.  This is at a time when our economy depends on socialism.  The reality is the U.S. has been a socialistic country since the 1930s.  To reject socialism now means condemning tens of millions of poverty.  The growing nostalgia for fundamental religious beliefs and conservative values is no solution at all.  It’s just a plea, “Stop the world I want to get off—why can’t things be the way they used to be?”

Now I’m dwelling on the bad again.  Are my worries just from getting old?  Or do we all have something to be depressed about?

JWH – 7/15/12

Damn, I’m Out of Shape!!!

I went swimming today, the first time in probably a quarter of a century.  It was an eye opening experience.  If I fell off a boat without a life preserver I’d be dead in 2 minutes, maybe even 1 minute.  I was never a good swimmer, nor could tread water well, but I had the stamina to struggle along for maybe 50 yards.  I could have put up a good fight.  At 60 and weighing 232 pounds I’d just go under immediately in open water and not come up.

When I was first married, and we lived at an apartment with a pool, I weighed 155 pounds and could run for miles.  I thought before I got in the pool today that fat floated.  Boy was I wrong.  My fat don’t float!  I sink.

For years people have been telling me to take up swimming to help my back.  I’ve always said no because swimming is inconvenient.  But my neighbor, who has a pool, has been urging me to use her pool, so this morning I gave it a try.  I jumped in off the ladder at the deep end and immediately discovered my lack of buoyancy.  It was a struggle to get back to the surface.

At first I thought her pool too small to do laps, but then I tried to do a lap, on the short length, which can’t be more than 20-25 feet.  I made it, using my flailing doggie paddle style, but I had to grab on the edge of the pool and catch my breath after just the first crossing.

I did some experiments trying to hold my breath under water using the stop-watch feature of my Casio.  At first I could only go 8 seconds.  Eventually I worked up to 13.  That’s pitiful.  I guess that’s a sign of getting old.  When I was young it wasn’t much trouble to hold my breath under water for 60 seconds or more.

I stuck with doing laps and I went back and forth maybe 10 times, either doggie paddling, or some kind of crude breast stroke.  I tried the normal crawl one time but I just don’t have that kind of coordination.

I’m not completely out of shape.  After swimming I did 20 minutes of physical therapy and then 10 minutes of Bowflex.  But it’s obvious that being overweight and 60 that I’m at a lifetime low point when it comes to stamina.  Before my back got bad I did stair walking at work and could do 20-24 floors on my break.  I can ride my bike for 30-45 minutes now, but I’ve discovered that unless I’m riding uphill, bikes are so efficient that it’s not much exercise. 

It so weird watching my body decline, because mentally I feel like I did when I was 19.

So far I’ve lost 6 pounds on my diet.  I do believe if I worked hard I could regain some of my stamina – but will I?  I’ve discovered in recent years I’ve adapted to a very sedentary lifestyle.  My back limits my activities, especially standing or walking, so I’ve just accepted doing less.  I think I need to get an exercise bike to push myself.  Sitting on a bike, leaning forward on the handlebars, doesn’t hurt my back.  Swimming, or more precisely, trying to swim, didn’t seem to hurt my back either.  So I’ll keep it up.  At least in warm weather.

On one hand I feel like just accepting getting old and doing less, on the other hand I believe I should fight the inevitable.  I see all these natural catastrophes on TV and how old people need so much help just to run away from danger.  I don’t want to be like that.  I see news reports of people rushing to rescue stuff in their homes before fires engulf them.  With my stamina I couldn’t rescue much.  And living in an emergency shelter would be very hard on me.  I’ve gotten old and soft and addicted to creature comforts, the crutch of modern air conditioned living. 

I wouldn’t be much of a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world.

I’ve become an animal highly adapted to a very specific environment.  I’ve developed a routine where I expend very little energy to survive.  But what will life be like at 70?  Or 80?  I would ask about 90, but I just can’t imagine my declining stamina letting me live to 90.  But I see 90 year-old people all the  time – but most of them move very little.

Do I ride the current slope of my declining stamina, or do I made a big effort and bend that declining slope into a rising one?  Could I regain the stamina I had at 50 or 40?  That might be dreaming, but I do know people my age that are many times more active than I am.  However, I think they’ve always been many times more active than I was.

I’ll keep you posted.  I need some way of measuring progress though.  Have to think about that.  Are there standardized tests for stamina?

JWH – 6/30/12

The Things I’m Learning From Getting Older

Today I was at Sports Authority buying a bicycle, which I hope to ride for exercise and lose weight.  I have a bad back because of spinal stenosis and arthritis, and can’t walk for exercise, so the idea is to bicycle instead.  My theory is losing weight will help my back so I can do more, which is really a wish to be younger.  We all want to turn the clock back.   But, those delusional desires are so instructive.

I think women want to look younger, and men want to act younger.  While waiting for the salesman to prep the bike I bought, two strikingly beautiful young women came into the store.  Is there anything more educational about aging than envying the young?

I try hard not be be resentful.  I don’t feel bitter.  I pretty much laugh at the failures of my brain and body, but there is a fair amount of resentment of having to grow old.  I try to keep it wistful, but sometimes it gets heavy.

I noticed that most of the people in the store were young, and obviously pursuing different physical activities, activities I can’t pursue anymore because of my age and condition.  It really made me feel old and crippled.  Although I’m only 60 and can still walk to a degree, I feel very limited physically, but I know plenty of people that have far more limitations, so I can’t bitch.  At 60 I can see the future of doing less and less.

By writing about my growing list of age related restrictions, I hope I’m being philosophical and not whinny.  At 60, I’m only getting a hint at what it means to be really old, so I think I need to psychologically prepare myself for being a decrepit old dude that can’t remember shit.

While waiting for my bike to be tuned up, I found a kiosk with this film for extreme sports advertising the GoPro Hero video camera, and it really made me think about being young again.  The youth in these films below are pushing the envelope of youthful vitality.  It would be totally pointless to wish I could do stuff like this, but I’ve got to ask, what are the activities that I could pursue that would push the limit of my fading vitality?

What if I strapped on a helmet with a HERO 2 camera, can I do anything worth filming?

I highly recommend you play these videos in full screen at the highest resolution.  I love these videos.  They’re dazzling, beautiful, and exciting – a cruel reminder of all my resentments about getting old.  It’s also a reminder of my own personal failings, and the limitations I’ve imposed on myself.

This doesn’t mean I’m ready to call it quits, I’m just hard-pressed to imagine doing anything Hero 2 worthy.  But what if I was 90 watching myself write this blog while listening to music, would I impress my older self with an activity I won’t be able to do then?

Now, I know few people pursue these extreme sports – I think these people must have a gene for thrill-seeking which I obviously don’t have.  I also assume they have a lot more money than I ever had.  I think we all resent beautiful, rich, jetsetters, unless we’re beautiful and rich, so that’s not the resentment I’m talking about.

I’m sure there are plenty of twenty-five-year olds that would envy the folks in these films.

My issue is with myself, for not trying harder, for not making more of the time and the opportunities I had when I was young.  I have the genes to be a bookworm that loves quiet indoor life.  I think if I magically got to live life over I think I’d trade TV and movie watching for several hours a week of being active outside.  I’d still keep books, writing, science and computers – in a do-over I’d just try to find a balance, maybe two-thirds geek and one-third jock, instead of 100% geek.

Most of my friends who are my age think I dwell on getting old, and that I just need to act younger.  They tell me I’m getting old because I think I’m old.  They think they are still young because they believe it to be so.  I think they’ve forgotten what it’s really like to be young and are refusing to accept the reality of aging.  But then I’ve always been a Puritanical Buddhist Atheist that’s enjoys the grimness of reality and acceptance.

I think age is relative, but until your body starts failing in some serious way, you can continue to believe that youthfulness is a state of mind.  Once you experience real body failures then you know youthful state of mind is bullshit.  Getting old is so goddamn instructive of how reality works.  This is why one of my all-time favorite stories is “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany.  It’s a multi-level story where we get to see the limitations faced by each character as they struggle to fight through their own personal barriers.

Getting older and learning about the value of youth is like that old saying, “You don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone.”  We all feel immortal when we’re young.  We all feel like we’ve got plenty of time, time enough to waste.  You won’t sense the reality of getting older until that sense of immortality goes away, and you realize time is running out, with none to waste.

Now, I don’t mean this to sound like, “Oh no, poor pitiful me.”   No, what I expect is to scare the crap out of you about getting older.  Don’t waste time, you have less than you think.  Fight through the barriers you face because when you get older you’ll resent you didn’t try harder.  What I’m learning about being 60 is I wished I had known what it would have been like when I was in my teens and twenties.

What I need to do now is imagine what being 90 is like to inspire me at 60.  At 90, 60 would be an envious youth, and a 90’s mind would know how I wasted my time in my 60’s.

My back pain limits how much I can do.  And my memory is also going, and I’m realizing the limitations that will mean too.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still functional, I just function differently.  I’m getting some insights on what it means to get old and frail.  My next door neighbor is 93, and can’t walk much because of a stroke.  She spends her days sitting in a chair watching TV.  I can now see a path from where I’m at, to where she’s at.  I know I’ve got to be prepared for a lot more limitations.  Maybe it’s lucky that I have all that practice at watching TV, because if I had been an extreme sports kind of guy it would have been much harder to give it all up.

When you’re a kid all the old people ask you what you want to be when you grow up.  As a kid, you feel you have this potential to be anything and it’s a really hard decision to make up your mind what to do.  Well, it feels the same way when you’re older.  People ask you what you’re going to do when you retire, and you think of all the possibilities.  Whether you are young or old, the key is learning to deal with reality and it’s limitations.  Those dark-haired beauties I saw at Sports Authority today would never have given me the time of day, even when I was their age.  And there’s never been an age that I could have been an extreme sports guy.  If you’re going to be regretful, you need to be realistically regretful.

Don’t resent what never could have been real.  Resent what you failed to do that you realistically could have achieved.

JWH – 4/29/12

The mood for this essay was provided by Donovan and “Ferris Wheel.”

Reading in the Second Half of Life

I started reading Anna Karenina this week.  I’ve never read Tolstoy before, I guess I wasn’t old enough.  Last year my favorite novels were The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope and Middlemarch by George Elliot.  Those stories are a far cry from the science fiction I grew up reading.  My story tastes have changed as I’ve gotten older.  I still read science fiction, I just finished Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, but characters seldom seem real in science fiction, not like those in the classic and literary novels.  The same is true of movies and television, where I once thought The Matrix brilliant, now I find the sublime in Downton Abbey.

At sixty I can look back and see my reading life changed around fifty.  Starting at twelve until my college years my reading life had been shaped by the science fiction of Robert A. Heinlein, but even before that, I can remember hazy days of grade school, and the earliest novels I remember reading on my own were the Oz books by L. Frank Baum and the Danny Dunn and Tom Swift, Jr. series.  My early life of reading was inspired by escapism, fantasy and science fiction.  But then, isn’t the youthful literary work of humankind about myths, fantastic creatures, gods, epic voyages,  magic and faraway places?

Don’t we all come down to Earth when we get old?  More and more I prefer nonfiction and history to fiction, but when I read fiction I crave literary works whose authors were careful observers of the realistic details of living.

Getting old for me means paying more attention to the real world and less to the fantasy worlds.  All fiction is fantasy, but I grew up reading fiction inspired by fantasy worlds, and now that I’m getting old I prefer books inspired by this world.  I wonder if this trend continues as I age, will I give up fiction altogether and just read the here and now?

I’ve often compared my reading habit to a drug addiction, and my belief in science fiction to religion, but then Marx said religion is the opiate of the people, so the two overlap.  When we are young we want reality to be more fantastic than it is.  We want to fly.  We want super powers.  We want to be protected by powerful beings.  Comic book super-heroes are no different from the gods of mythology.

As the years pile up the fantastic fails us like our fleshy passions.  As our bodies decay, we are forced to face reality.

Why after fifty, is James Joyce’s Ulysses so much more an adventure than Homer’s?

Konstantin Levin becomes more fascinating than Valentine Michael Smith.

When I was young I wanted to be John Carter, now I rather be John Bates, the valet in Downton Abbey.

Who knew Earth would become more far out than Mars.

JWH – 3/27/12

The Things I Should Be Doing

I tend to do whatever I feel like.

But then I’m sixty pounds overweight and my health is going down hill.  My house could use a good deal of renovation, and even though my yard guys keep my lawn close-clipped, it’s a green carpet of weeds.  I feel great relief when I see those shows about hoarders because it makes me feel clean and orderly in comparison.  I take a certain pride that I’m not an alcoholic like my parents but I have quite a reading addiction.  I wanted to be a writer, and although I can churn out the blog posts, I never write the fiction I constantly create in daydreams.

One of the biggest problems in my life is I’ve been reasonably happy and content – I think drive comes from dissatisfaction.  If it wasn’t for the guilt over being unproductive I could cruise to my deathbed with no regrets.  Yeah, that’s a pretty big exception though.

A friend of mine recently got some paid-for psychological advice which she shared with me for free.  She was told to picture herself dying comfortable, able to think clearly – and then asked to imagine what her regrets about leaving life would be.

Now that can be taken a number of ways.  There’s a difference between the fantasies that didn’t come true and the ambitions I gave up because of laziness.  Remember that movie about the bucket list – well how many people can die with the aid of a billionaire to finance an expensive life-improvement checklist?  I could say my life sucked because I didn’t become a rock star like Bob Dylan but is that fair when I can’t carry a tune and the only song I can remember the words to is “Happy Birthday” and I screw that up half the time.

Studies have shown that success is about 10,000 hours of practice, so should we all be regretful that we didn’t pick something and have applied ourselves diligently for three hours a day for ten years?

Maybe that psychiatrist meant something different.  Maybe he meant that people should regret not being nicer, or more generous, or more caring.  Many people believe a good life is based on how much you do for others and not what you do for yourself.  And to be honest, I’m a very selfish person.  I don’t feel too guilty though, I try to be a helpful person in my own way, and I give regularly to a number of charities, but the reality is I have no more talent for providing human comfort then I do music.

I really wish I could have be more generous with my wife Susan, doing more things she likes to do, like going to baseball games or to bars on trivia night.  I just can’t though.  Baseball is boring, and I don’t like loud bars.  And I’m sure she feels bad about not liking the many things I like to do, like watching documentaries on cosmology or sitting around listening to jazz from 1959.

When it comes down to dealing with regret I think we need to be realistic.

I need to picture lying in my nursing home bed and think of things I should have done that I could have done.  And since I’m turning 60 in a couple of months, it should be things I could start doing right now.  Crying over my first six decades is pointless.  In all honesty, I can make a long list of things I wished I had done in those first sixty years and it would come down to a long list of “I wish I hadn’t been too chicken-shit to do X.”  But what’s the point of that, I have a timid omega male personality and that’s not going to change.

Sure I can think of a few things to wish for that might have been practical.  I wished I started caring for my teeth as a kid instead of waiting until I was in my forties.  I suppose I could have given up my favorite foods at 175 pounds instead of 235.  And if I had only maintained my exercise levels that I acquired in gym class in junior and senior high I could have been the person I always fantasized being.  Ha-ha.

See, that’s the thing about thinking about our dying regrets – it’s easy to make bucket lists, but it’s hard to judge who we really are.

I’ve known I should lose my extra pounds ever since I gained them.  I’ve always regretted them.  I’ve quit eating all my fun foods decades ago.  Other than forcing myself to live with constant craving, I don’t know what else to do.  And the same is true of having a beautifully decorated house and spiffy all grass lawn – I’d have to have a personality change.

I could write on my bucket list that life would have been great if I could have had sex with Catherine Zeta Jones or spent a year living in Paris writing a brilliant unforgettable novel.  But should I really downgrade my life on Earth because I didn’t?

At work people laugh at me because I all too often make references to things I read in books.  They say I shouldn’t read so much.  But, hey, I’m a bookworm.  That’s like telling a giraffe that he’d have a better life without that long neck.  Hell, when it comes down to it, I’m going to regret not reading more books, or listening to more music, or watching more documentaries, or all the other things I really love doing.

When I’m old and dying I’m going to regret losing my health and dying because I’ll have to stop doing what I’ve been doing my whole life, which is being me.

JWH – 8/7/11

I’m 59, But Feel 19, But Something’s Wrong with My Body

A common sentiment among older people is they still feel young inside, just like when they were teenagers, but it’s their body that’s aging.  I feel that too, but yesterday it occurred to me that I have changed because of a conversation I had with my friend Mike.  We were talking about how bad the old TV show The Monkees was – it’s in reruns on Antenna TV.  Back in 1966, when I was 14, my sister and I loved that show.  Watching it now makes me think I must have been brain damaged!

The Monkees is a horrendous TV show.  It makes Gilligan’s Island feel like Shakespeare, and that’s another old show I loved as a kid but can’t stand now.  So I can’t really say I feel like I did when I was young, something has changed.  But why do I feel unchanged?

If I think about it I can come up with all kinds of ways I’ve changed.  When I was a kid I did stupid things like own a motorcycle, hitch-hike and take drugs, none of which I would do now.  I now think a much wider range of women are attractive, but that’s true of food, music, books, etc.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m not the person I was when I was young.  So why do we feel we are?

I think the tendency is to feel that we’re a little soul driving around inside our head, steering our body until it turns into a rusted old junker.  Now I guess some people feel they are different inside as they age, but I think a lot of people don’t.  What causes that feeling?  It just occurred to me that I’ve reread things I wrote decades ago and felt I was reading someone else’s writing.  Are our inner beings unconnected to our thinking and opinions too, like they are from the body?

Is there a me inside of my body that’s unchanging even though my body changes, my tastes change, my opinions change, my skills change, and so on?  I know when I’m sick I can feel the me-ness shrink inside, like its being physically assaulted, but the uniqueness stays there no matter how much pain or nausea I feel until I pass out.  When I fall asleep the me goes away, but a tiny bit of it exists in dreams.  When I’ve had surgery and have been put under, it feels like the me has been shut off like a light switch and then suddenly turned back on.

It’s interesting to think of the me, the part of me that’s self-aware, is separate from my opinions and tastes. There’s a science fictional concept called downloading, where people imagine having their brains recorded and then burned into a clone’s brain or digital computer.  They think of this as a form of immortality, but what if the me is a mechanism of the brain that doesn’t copy?  What if the me is the equivalent of a tape-head, and not the tape?  So experiences flow past it but it doesn’t change with them?

But that doesn’t explain why I loved The Monkees in 1966 and hate it in 2011.  It implies that it’s not the tape head, or that the tape head does change over time.  Even though I feel like I’m the same person at 59 as I was a 19 that might be a delusion.  If I could put my 59 year old brain back into my 19 year old body would would I keep my wisdom or turn foolish?  Of course, if I could I put my 59 year old brain back into my 14 year old body would I start loving The Monkees again?  I don’t think so.

I’ve read that people with brain damage feel like different people.  I’m guessing the brain is what feels homey and constant, and it’s the physical body that feels different with aging, and the informational content of the brain that makes my tastes change.  What I worry about is having a stroke or getting Alzheimer’s and losing part of my me-ness.  I’m already used to my body breaking down.  And I’m getting used to forgetting information in my brain, which doesn’t hurt by the way.  But I don’t relish losing that feeling of unchanging me-ness.  But sometimes the me dies before the body.

NOTE:  I think a lot of people read my stuff and think I’m depressed because I write about what they think are depressing topics.  But I’m not depressed at all.  I marvel at all the changes in my life.  I regret not being able to hang onto everything, but that’s not how things work and I accept it.  I don’t want to experience decline and death, but I don’t have any choice, so I like to philosophize about what I’m going through.  And I’m trying to learn from those explorers ahead of me, those folks in their 70s, 80s and 90s.

JWH – 4/11/11