From One Old Man to Two Old Men

Two old men are hobbling and stumbling and stalling and rambling incoherently along again for the presidency of the United States, the same old men who “ran” four years ago, the oldest pair of has-beens in our history, now older still, and both visibly diminished as candidates. If is it ageist, as an old man myself, I don’t think it unduly ageist to wish that both of these guys retire gracefully—which will never happen, but only because one of them never does anything gracefully. Yet, it would be wise and for the greater good of the country for both, or either, even at this late date, to step away from this clash of antiquities and occasional if increasing senilities. You’ve had your day. Move along.

With my sincere appreciation for your service, Joe.

Old Friends

Selfie credit: Dave

Visiting my old friend, Dave, after forty years, I found it both perfectly natural and utterly amazing how easily we reconnected. Nothing of the bond, nothing of the chemistry between us has changed—only our entire lives. A curious style of male friendship, not fan boy or man crush or biweekly poker player/bowler/golf buddy, this vintage affinity is my preferred mode of friendship, old friendship. Henry David Thoreau observed of society that “We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for one another” and that “less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communication.” Granted, forty years may seem an extreme interval, but for an introvert and a bit of a lackluster homebody like myself, it can take forty years to accrue new value or enough life worth talking about. We talked for four days. I trust I will see Dave again before another forty years pass, but if we don’t see one another, our bond and interaction would be the same at 105. I cannot feel friendship any more deeply or perfectly.

The great drawback of old friends is our age, more specifically, mortality. We lose old friends, one another, with increasing frequency. (R.I.P., Fabian) The ranks of old friends must inevitably thin, and new friends can never really replace them. An aged new friend (rare but possible) can become an old friend with sufficient time, but a young or a middle-aged friend can never become, and thus never replace, an old friend lost. Survive long enough and you run out of old friends. When the old friends are gone, it’s time to go.  

Year One Done

I have reviewed my first full year of retirement. It was a year of living leisuredly, of domestic maintenance and improvement, reading, writing, thinking, guitaring, some travel, socializing and familiarizing, and spectating upon the universe. Watching the world go by, passing the time, not in either a trivial recreational way nor a determined scientific way, but moderately, suggestively, impressionistically. At times I hear the call, faint though it may be, of a greater ambition, of doing something, and I genuinely wonder if the something that I think I’m doing is actually something, anything at all—that is, you know, this: reading, thinking, and scratching out in electrons some evidence of consciousness, gratitude, and charity. It’s all been said and done before, all that matters anyway, but one has to say and do as much of that all as one can oneself, live it, enact it, if only imaginatively. Perhaps that’s how the objective universe holds together, in a weave of consciousnesses. Yours, mine, theirs, living and dead. It’s how my subjective universe does.

When I feel that nervous edginess to do something bigger, to be someone more than myself, to inflict some good upon someone else, upon the world, I lie down on the couch, to nap, and it often goes away. Or I smoke on it. And maybe get around to it.