Alter Egos

 

            Lately I’ve spent a bit of my idle time thinking about who I’d want to be if I weren’t me. And since I’m geriatric, I think about who I wish I’d been. It’s all harmless speculation, but it probably reveals something about me – something that nobody else is interested in. Anyway, here’s my alter ego list:

 

Denzel Washington – It was impressive, especially in his early movies, watching his confident stride. Kim would sometimes see my hesitant slouching gait and ask me to walk like Denzel. I did a pretty good job of it, but only for about a dozen strides. Not sure how he is walking today.

 

Garrison Keillor – I’m not sure what he’s like in person and have never heard him perform, but he is my age, and I’ve long admired his humorous bi-weekly essays – though I don’t share his fundamentalist upbringing and never had a radio program. He is a welcome dose of sanity toward which I aspire.

 

Bruce Willis – I mean, of course, before the dementia. He simply had a zest for life that I admire, and he showed his joy. I tend to hold back. I seldom laugh, and Kim points out that I seldom smile unless we are talking about sex.

 

Hugh Grant – Forget his personal life. I would like to be the Hugh Grant his scriptwriters have created, with charming deadpan witty sarcasm.

 

Dad – Yes, I wish I could be my father, with his solid but somewhat distant warmth. If I were him, I would try to remedy that distance from his sons. In fact, why don’t I do that with my own sons . . .?

 

Horatio – He is, of course, Hamlet’s friend. He sees the ghost and poor Yorick, and he lives to tell Hamlet’s story. I would like to step more fully into the “friend” role, at the very least as a companion and witness, though I can do without the ghost and the skull.

 

Classmate – I am deeply moved to read the tributes my college buddies have posted on the death of our classmates. I’m not sure what they would/will say about me. So, what I think I’m saying is that the self I would like to have been is the kind of person who would earn such tributes. (And no, I am not asking for them here. Save them for my In Memoriam obituary.)

 

Mr. Fixit – Not me. This could be pretty much anyone on Kim’s side of the family. I did successfully unclog the toilet, and I fixed Kim’s phone by turning it off and then on, but that’s about it. O yes – and I set the clocks when Daylight Savings ended.

 

Guy on a White Horse – Shortly before she accepted my marriage proposal, Kim dreamed I was riding in on a white horse to rescue her – from what, I’m not sure. (She said Yes after two botched proposal attempts – but that’s another story.) Anyway, I’m still trying to live up to that dream . . ..

 

            You might have noticed that this is a male group. Sorry, but my imagination is too weak to feature a woman as my alter ego. Maybe Oprah . . .? 

Maintenance

 

            The approach of winter calls for preparation, most of which is pretty obvious.

 

·      Get the furnace checked.

 

·      Remove leaves and pine needles from the gutters – something I pay a guy to do as I no longer climb tall ladders.

 

·      Put screens in the garage and make sure storm windows are in place.

 

·      Get the leaves out of the window wells (not yet done).

 

·      Deal, somehow, with the abundant leaves in the gardens.

 

·      Drive orange rods into the ground in front of the garden near the driveway so gravel is not plowed into the flowers.

 

·      Stack firewood in a dry place (probably more for cozy evenings than for home heating).

 

·      Make sure the freezer and pantry are stocked in case we are snowed in.

 

·      Put snow tires on the car (probably can wait until December, though snow is in the forecast for Sunday).

 

·      Check phone numbers of friends who we might need for various kinds of support.

 

·      Make sure my snow boots, with cleats, are ready and waiting by the front door.

 

·      Locate heavy wool socks, mittens, and that great winter collar thing.

 

This is on top of regular maintenance. Deb, a builder who did a major remodel for us, gave us a booklet describing routine home maintenance. It was ten pages long.

 

            Several years ago, a teacher commented that after a certain age (she was maybe 50), much of our daily effort is devoted to personal maintenance. In this spirit, have you noticed how much human maintenance is required now that we are in our winter years? I’m talking about the vitamins and supplements that we take, the medical and dental appointments we need to make and keep, and the walks we are supposed to take (not easy in sleet or sub-zero temperatures, so do what we can now). Stretching. Drinking more water than you ever drank before. Staying out of the sun. Doing whatever we can to support our brains. (Isn’t it convenient that google came along just as my memory starts to go. Can’t remember the name of the city 15 miles north of where we live? J.F.G.I.

 

            And it might be a good time for a bit of relationship maintenance. Kim and I are going to be fairly isolated for a few months (not counting medical appointments), so it would be nice if we got along. And I need to do a better job with my telephone friends, and in responding to email from friends. We don’t expect a lot of company up here in the winter, so phone and email are important.

 

Love Song

 

            T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has long been a favorite poem of mine, one which I recently rediscovered while watching “T. S. Eliot: The Search for Happiness.” It’s a long poem, and when I discussed it with my students we did not try to deal with the whole thing, but rather with sections a few lines long, which is what I will do here. This will read more like notes than a finished essay. So be it.

 

            Prufrock is an older guy with the concerns and insecurities that sometimes come with aging. I’m surprised that Eliot wrote it when he was in his 20s. I see in these fragments, and in the poem as a whole (Read it!), concerns that people my age have hopefully passed through, arriving in a better place.

 

Some passages that grip me:

 

            I have measured out my life with coffee spoons . . ..

 There is something here about the ordinariness of our daily routines that’s a bit depressing. Nothing wrong with coffee spoons, but is that how you want to measure out your life?

 

            I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

            I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

We geezers know that we lose height as a result of years and years of gravity, plus some tired tissue in the spine. Rolled trousers is not a fashion statement.

 

            Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

            I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

Hair loss worries? And then, what a low threshold for daring is simply eating a peach – though they do sometimes drip on my shirt. And then there’s Prufrock’s vision of himself as one of those old people with nothing better to do. He seems concerned about how he will be seen.

 

            I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

 

            I do not think that they will sing to me.

Prufrock has an awareness of the magical, perhaps romantic, connection that is possible, then the pause (the skipped line) followed by the realization that there’s no magical connection for him. Alas!

 

            There will be time, there will be time

            To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

            There will be time to murder and create . . ..

Preparing a face suggests some kind of compromise in order to fit in. But then “time to murder and create”? Not happening.

 

            And indeed there will be time

            To wonder, “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”

            Time to turn back and descend the stair,

            With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

            (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

Again: hesitation, with a turning back instead of daring, and worry about looking old.

 

Love Song? Not quite. The poem does begin, "Let us go then, you and I," but there's not much about "you." I hope we are past the stage where we worry so much about getting old. We are old.

 

            I have to conclude with some humor: A team of doctors is doing surgery on an anesthetized patient, and one of them says, “Doesn’t he look like a foggy evening in London?”

(Read the opening of the poem to see why this is funny.)

Wabi-Sabi

 

            Autumn has always been my favorite season. I’ve always enjoyed going back to school, whether as a student or a teacher. Though the season is typically associated with dying, with the falling off (thus “Fall”) from the ripeness of summer, for me it’s more about starting than ending. This from a poem I wrote about going back to work:

 

      First Days

 

At school first days always shine

like new keys I carry over the polished

floor to the scramble for old friends,

all pros, tan and telling of bears, novels,

the lake up north, painting in Umbria,

a wedding or two.  And above the sink

just down the hall my face caught by the

institutional mirror glows simple as pudding.

 

 

            And, of course, John Keats celebrated the beauty of autumn in his “To Autumn,” which I recommend in its entirety. The poem begins: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” and it goes on to describe the abundant ripening, though with hints of mortality as winter approaches: “the soft-dying day,” “the small gnats mourn” and “the light wind lives or dies.” Summer ends. Those of us living in northern Michigan know this.

 

            Keats is approaching the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi. Robyn Griggs Lawrence describes it thus:

Broadly, wabi-sabi is everything that today’s sleek, mass-produced, technology-saturated culture isn’t. It’s flea markets, not shopping malls; aged wood, not swank floor coverings; one single morning glory, not a dozen red roses. Wabi-sabi understands the tender, raw beauty of a gray December landscape and the aching elegance of an abandoned building or shed. It celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all the other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. To discover wabi-sabi is to see the singular beauty in something that may first look decrepit and ugly.

Wabi-sabi reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet—that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to dust. Nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and erosion are embodied in frayed edges, rust, liver spots. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace both the glory and the melancholy found in these marks of passing time.

In other words, the awareness of our transience actually enhances and deepens our experience of beauty. Melancholy rocks. The older I get, the more I appreciate wabi-sabi. I hope people around me do, too.

 

NOTE: If you take wabi-sabi too far, it becomes wabi-slobby. And if you take it in a Native American direction, it becomes kemosabi.

Old Movies

            We recently decided to check out some older movies available for screening. Here are a few of our rediscoveries:

 

Sister Act – Just as enjoyable now as it was the last several times we saw it. We love Whoopie being Whoopie, the odd nuns were fun to watch, and the music is contagious. Sister Act 2 was not quite as good, but also enjoyable.

 

All the President’s Men – A number of people recommended this as one of their favorites, but we could not get into it, possibly because of our saturation with today’s political crimes. Dumped it after 15 minutes.

 

The Birdcage – Totally enjoyed seeing this again. Nathan Lane and Robin Williams? How could we go wrong? Yes, the drag queen acting was over the top, but that’s part of the fun. See it.

 

The Green Book – Somehow, we missed this when it came out. The movie tells the true story of the Don Shirley Trio, a jazz group popular in the 60s. The story centers on the relationship between Don Shirley, a Black classically trained pianist, and his driver, a tough Italian-American, as they tour the South and deal with the racism they find at all levels of society. We especially enjoyed the movie because Kim dated Don Shirley, and another member of the trio, when she lived in California. I did not see her in the movie.

 

The Way We Were – I don’t think I’d seen this before. Good star power from Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand in a love story, with serious political differences between the lovers, that spans several decades. Certainly worth a look. I wonder what the story would be if it were set in 2025.

 

Chicago – Watch it for the dancing. The movie is ultra-stylish and very enjoyable.

 

Harry Potter (1 & 2) – Never saw these when my kids were growing up. I could not follow the plot, mainly because I was distracted by the amazing special effects created way back in 2001.

 

Something’s Gotta Give – Wonderfully entertaining! How can you go wrong with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton?! See it again – if only to appreciate what we lost when Diane Keaton died. We will look for more of her work.

 

We also watched some old sitcoms and other tv shows:

 

Seinfeld – After watching a couple of episodes, I thought, “This really holds up, years later.” After a couple more: “O.K., I’ve seen enough.”

 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – These were intriguing when I was a kid. I’m no longer kid enough. It seemed a bit forced and self-consciously clever.

 

Frasier – Worth an episode or two, but it got a bit repetitious.

 

This is only a short list of tv programs, but it makes me wonder, in the spirit of looking back, what were my favorites? What comes to mind: Taxi, Cheers, Friends, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Cosby Show. 

 

What are your favorites? And do you have any older movies to recommend? Winter is coming to us . . ..

 

 

Neighborly

 

            Since all of our neighbors are soon to be gone, fled to warmer climates, I’ve come to examine just what it means to be neighborly. Two recent examples come to mind:

 

            Rick and Sandy, our neighbors to the north, demonstrated how to be neighborly when we had all our smoke alarms go off – as I wrote about in a previous blog. They immediately stepped up, disconnected the offending alarms, and called their electrician to come by the next day to get our alarm system working properly. They stepped up without hesitation – at least, none that we could see. They stepped up in a similar way when a large branch fell on our garage. They called a carpenter who had done good work for them, and he showed up to repair the damage. Aside from the specific gratitude for these actions, I also felt a kind of warmth knowing we have neighborly neighbors who are looking out for us.

 

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            I deleted a paragraph about our un-neighborly neighbors. Who wants to read someone else’s complaints? But I confess that I did enjoy writing it . . ..

 

            This neighborly issue is important because we are old. We are at an age when we need a back-up in case something goes wrong. And it really helps if our back-up is close – as Rick and Sandy were, and other former neighbors were (that’s you, Barry and Karen). Though we didn’t have to call on them, we knew they were there for us. They would, for one example, keep an eye on our vacant house when we were doing the snowbird thing between Michigan and Florida. There are a lot of needs that can occur short of a 9-1-1 call. We have family who would drop everything and come to our rescue, but that’s not the same as a neighbor who can fetch some milk from the market when we are too sick or injured to go get it, or drive us to the dentist appointment.

 

            My dictionary’s first definition of neighbor is “one living or located near another.” Clear enough. But I am drawn to the second definition of neighbor: “fellow man.” Setting the “man” issue aside, I am drawn to the example of this definition in action: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Being “neighborly,” then, means bending toward the second definition, and extending the range a bit beyond next door. Loving thy neighbor as thyself might be a big ask, but it’s good to keep it in your heart, your words, and your behavior. That’s my neighborly advice.

 

 

Clouds

             Kim and I are fascinated by clouds, and she has taken hundreds of photos, a few of which we would like to share with you. Most of these were taken from our home on Torch Lake.

            But first – why this cloud fascination? What’s the appeal? There’s always beauty, of course, whatever that is, but also there is something dramatic, especially in those clouds that say, “change is coming,” usually in the form of rain, possibly a thunderstorm. And clouds are appealing because they are up there, above the earth, disconnected, for the most part, from our petty and nasty earthly struggles. They are part of our earth, but also above it, obeying its own laws, much the way many religious people envision a holy realm above our earth, obeying its sacred laws. Thus, the clouds offer a kind of deliverance – if you put your mind and spirit to it.

Kim did not take this photo - it was at the other end of the lake.

This was taken at our home in Gainesville, Florida. 

North Carolina

for Genne'