poetry

Things Learned In Old Age, Accidentally

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The faster drivers in my area are females. Since I committed to a 1.4 Litre engine to prevent NASCARRING (sic)*, most of the cars passing my new, used car as we putter along 10 miles over the speed limit are being driven by females. Is it sexist to think they were always careful, law-abiding drivers? Or did I only know careful, law-abiding females in my youth? Back then, this phrase was a constant mantra when driving with a female passenger: “Why are you in such a hurry?” Hm. Maybe my ascension to the heights of safe driving simply made me more aware. Or maybe there is less tint on windows these days, and the driver can actually be seen and not assumed. Don’t know and it suddenly became unimportant. I’m a safe driver, now, and anyone of any sex, color, religion, altered state of existence, or sexual preference can pass me without comment or digital salute.

At the first stop light on the four-lane out of Turning Stone resort this morning, there was a Dodge Charger with a rumbling motor in the front right lane and a quiet, but deadly looking Tesla in the front left. The light changed and both took off. I caught them at the next red light, the Dodge still rumbling and the Tesla still had nothing to add. The light changed and off they went, again. Since there wasn’t another light—or a random speed trap—for the next 20 miles, they were soon out of sight and forgotten. My small-block 1.4 liter never saw them again. Are you wondering who won? Also, no idea who or what was driving either. Damn tint. Think either might have been driver-less? Ai is a street racer? Or maybe two girls/women? All that is certain is neither was over 70 years old. There is an inverse relationship between the ability to properly handle horsepower and age, as noted in the first paragraph.

It’s the perfect season for Sports Nuts (SNs). If you are an SN you know what the problem is, and if you aren’t an SN you aren’t going to care but it’s tough to get a good night’s sleep. At an advanced age, proper rest and strategic breaks are important just to get through the daily 12-14 hours of watching sports without doing permanent damage to retinas, corneas, sclera, and pupils, as well as gray matter. The accidental calisthenics are okay unless there is a lot to cheer about in a short time. Again, a break is needed. Add to the mix sodium-laden snacks and the perfect reclining chair, and you may never hear from me again. Note: This is my last year rooting for the Yankees. The Mets have no expectations. Please, Yankees, just win one championship in my Medicare Years? **

My fitness center group is, uh, dwindling. One is out with a broken hip, another is out for spousal reasons, others are absent and I was nearly alone during this morning’s workout. It is similar to every time I made a new best friend in the past who then either moved away or died. It’s taken years to “therapy out” it’s not my fault, but if it walks like a duck.

*NASCARRING is when a young or foolish man gets behind the wheel of his car, is in no particular hurry, but still accepts the challenge of getting to the front of traffic. Yes, it gets confusing on major interstates with so much traffic, but that is/was the fun of it. It is also uniquely challenging in urban settings, unless there a lot of school buses.

** Upstate NY and the Buffalo Bills Football Team have a unique, doomed relationship. If you aren’t aware of Upstate NYers fervent support of this professional tease of a team, google it. The saying up here—which is tattooed on several Western New York bodies—is “Win One In My Lifetime.” Sad note, the baseball Yankees won a championship in every decade of their existence until the last one, 2010 to 2020. Approximately my years in the senior insurance program mentioned.

Random Ramblings of No Regard***

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Bad news followed by good news on the medical front these past 30 days. Went from possible colon cancer after failed Cologuard test and subsequent “polypy”(sic) colonoscopy, to happy, clear pathology report 30 days after the whole mess started. I’ll never get those days back.

Then a routine dentist appointment yielded a “bump” in the sinus area above the teeth. Referral to a specialist had me waiting a week, but then 3d-imaging and sinus x-rays had the specialist wondering “Why are you here?”, a saying much more evocative than the “di rigor” (It’s Italian. Google it. Expand your linguistic horizon.) “you’re okay”, especially if you’ve already googled “sinus lump” and its strange, dangerous possibilities. Oh, it was the root end of my tooth. Normal bump. I mean, it should have been, but I’m not a dentist, so…Both false alarms had threatened the June 18th removal of the last defective hip. The final removal of the last of arthritis is on schedule. Until some more of the Big A visits. So the Big C and the Big A will only need watching after June. Discussions with like-wise afflicted cohorts have helped make the decision if anything else happens, no more treatments. Let it be.

The Trump-Musk feud is fun to watch until you consider how serious the issues are for all of us. Commenting on either is unnecessary but I will make this statement: Watch out for Big Tech. Specifically, our data in the hands of Big Tech. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. never delete records. There is a current conspiracy buzzing around a company called Palantir and what it plans to do with all the data “collected by DOGE” when DOGE went into the IRS, Social Security, and other government agency’s data banks, and “handed” the data to third parties like Palantir. They will know everything, so says the conspiracy.

And Ai WILL end the world as we know it. You can see Ai and its devil offspring, algorithms, being used already to torment us in Customer Service and Financial Services. When was the last time you called your credit union, bank, or credit card company’s “customer service” number and got a live, human being, even after the phone tree?** As an Aging Man, I’ve noticed the algorithms are even better at aggravation than real people, and getting an apartment, car loan, home, loan at age 73, by myself, is nearly impossible. Ai even makes it impossible to get a person to explain why. So get ready,

And if Ai puts a lot of people out of work, what will they do?  So glad I’ve aged out of that particular worry.

Reason has revealed I am the cause of the unusually terrible weather upstate NY has suffered since my return. Unprecented weather with tornadoes and a once-in-a-50-year snowfall winter “seemed” to have followed me here. My bad. But I will not assume any contribution to how bad NY sports teams are. We’re talking Championships, now, not regular season. The Bill’s fan motto is now “win one in my lifetime” which is really a question, not a hope. The Yankees had won at least one World Series in every decade of their existence. My moving probably coast them the 2010s, but the 2020  failures are their own. Jets. Ha. Orangemen? Eh. Giants? Nooooo. Knicks? Ugh and ughier(sic). Nothing really is expected of the Nets, but the Rangers last Cup win was over 30 years ago with the last appearance in the Cup finals 10 years and counting. This can’t be all my fault. The Bill’s were good but not good enough when I lived here and have resumed being The Big Tease in NY sports.. For my son-in-law’s sake the Bills better answer that motto question…and soon. And not in the negative…again…

Mets were purposely omitted: they stole Soto, so…

This post went the way of life these days. Medical questions being dismissed or answered and treated allows the mind to randomly ramble and wonder about…

S%*$. I missed Nap time.

** And when you do, do they do anything but repeat what the algorithm says?

*** Selected this title because Ai says it is “terribly clunky and redundant.” It made my day.

The Dawn of Man was when, again?

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Do NOT Ai (google) “The Dawn Of* Man”. The result isn’t pornographic or even humorous. Just lengthy. The exact time man “dawned” will never be known but it is fun to think about. Sometime in the past, somewhere where there were no cell phones, a hominoid stood up and said, in caveman language, “I am man.” It’s been a wild ride since. This post has elected to use “Man” as an asexual generic term referring to whatever it was(sic*) we were back in those days. Until fig leaves were found, we probably all looked similarly potato-ish* and hairy, until certain times when nature ordered us to procreate in the most attractive ways.

The idea of The Dawn of Man came up during a conversation with a friend of mine named Al. (Sidebar: the lowercase L and upper case I look the same on my qwerty. From now on Artificial Intelligence will be Ai, with a dotted “i”. Fixing first sentence, now.) Al’s name may or may not be his real name, but any friends reading this will know who he is. Al declined to engage in trying to imagine the time in history when we changed from walking hominoids closely resembling apes, to the eventual rulers/polluters of the world. His point is, well, he doesn’t have a point except that it’s a fruitless exercise and a native-born North Carolinian does not engage in fruitless exercises. When the Civil War was carelessly mentioned, he went off script, anyway, meandering around the Northern War of Aggression he still mentally fights to this day. His only contribution to my inquiry was to tell me he had to air fry some chicken, but then changed his mind to soup, adding “No one is ever going to know, anyway.”

The picture in my head of air frying soup lasted only a moment and the question of when man knew he was The Man, returned. Religion answers the question nicely, with titillating pics of Adam and Eve eyeing each other over a ripe apple. I can believe that because if God wanted it to be that way, that’s the way it would be. But I’m not sure God was that specific, in the early days. My guess is He was trying things out, seeing how they worked. Following this line of thought it’s easy to imagine Him looking at these two particular Hominoids* and saying “Yes, that’s it.” Then, maybe, a bolt of lightning into each brain and—voila—mankind is ready for dawning.

But the Robin Williams comedy lover in me sees a different scenario and it may not be that far from the truth. One hominoid kills a wooly mammoth in the middle of the summer with some shale-tipped spears and reckless abandon. He/She/Them knows the summer sun will rot the meat and comes up with the second, original idea: “I can’t eat all this today.”  He/She/Them thought this, of course, since there was no language and he/she/them had a third idea: “Give some to the others.” But how to express any of these thoughts? (PS the slate tipped spear was the first idea.) It’s my postulation that Sign Language was the first form of communication. Imagine our suddenly smart hominoid running back to the others and dragging them by the arm to the mammoth carcass. Mime may have been invented then, too. It makes sense. Our early ancestors were mimers.*

 We mark time in our history for those events we can chronicle and remember. How we got the ability to chronicle is the subject of many episodes of “Ancient Aliens”. But where the show sees alien encounters all around the world, the “evidence” is really proof of a higher power, a comprehensive, coordinated higher power. It feeds an often debunked but never forgotten evolutionary theory we are in an ant farm, and our lives are directed by the Ant Farm Owner. He/She/Them could make us do whatever he/she/them wants us to do. And somehow, they gave us just enough intelligence to contemplate free will versus fate. Genius.

So, the “Dawn of Man” is when we were dropped into the sand. And when we die (see last post) we get plucked out and thrown in the garbage bin. Unless our owner gives us a decent burial in a match box.

Make a movie about that, Stanley Kubrick.

Comments welcome, and sorry, Al for plopping your name in here.

         *Google grammar says all these are wrong. As if I care, anymore. I’m old.

Lets Have Some Pun!

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The New Year Resolutions haven’t been going so well. Let’s talk about them later, okay? The first week of the New Year has not been kind to mental happiness as upstate NY suffered though a “lake effect” storm where someone (Mother Nature? God? The Buffalo Bills?) dropped snow on us every day, and blew it around like drunken confetti. We are still under a State Of Emergency prohibiting “unnecessary travel”. I watched the entire debacle from The Chair positioned in front of my huge apartment windows and enjoyed every second of the first few days. Now, in Day 6, it is time for necessary travel. Anywhere.

One last thing, people sure are interesting (30 percent?). One guy brushed snow off his car (it’s a northern thing) in his shorts. It was 6 degrees out and he didn’t last long. Another decided “no necessary travel” was not “no travel” and rocked his car back and forth in a parking lot drift until giving up and not coming back for two days. People did all sorts of strange things and the snow removing machines worked round the clock. Mother Nature just sent more.

So for Christmas I got a book and, yes, I read a lot when the parking action was slow. A lot. The book is titled: “Learn a Lot While You’re on the Pot”, by Jack Haynes. Without breaking a resolution, I’ll just say as we age, bowel movements seem to-how to say this–take their time. It’s a senior thing younger readers will learn eventually, but Mr. Haynes has capitalized on that “slowness” to offer a tidy book about all sorts of things. It’s 136 pages on 5 million (I exaggerate) subjects so it’s not comprehensive as much as pithy in its prose. It makes it easy to finish a topic or two before…you know.

My favorite sections is entitled : “Best Puns and Wordplay”. Let the games begin with an obvious groaner: “I once gave a performance about it Puns. It was just a play on words.”

Some puns only work when they are typed: “My friend became a vegetarian, even after I told him it was a big missed steak.” Say it out load to someone and they just stare at you. Like: “Once you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.” Or: “Did you hear about the explosion at the cheese factory? All that’s left is de-brie.”

Some are better spoken: “The future, the past, and the present walked into a bar. Things got a little tense.” You may have to wait for that spark of recognition on that one, but it’s worth it. Or: “I told my wife to embrace her mistakes and she gave me a hug.”

Sadly, there are some clunkers: “What do you call fake spaghetti? Im-pasta.” Ugh. “My son says he’s friends with only 25 letters of the alphabet, He doesn’t know y.”

Related: “My daughter said that after she ate alphabet soup she had a vowel movement.”

I’ll end this torture with my two favorites: “It’s been a terrible winter for Humpty Dumpty. But at least he had a great fall.” And, maybe not so much funny as apt: “I’ve discovered that where there’s a will, there’s a relative.”

Crap. One more: “Did you here about the toilet that was stolen from the Police Department? The cops have nothing to go on.”

Hope this helped any of those who were trapped at home with themselves, or even worse, family. Just remember: “Don’t let anyone call you average. That’s just mean.”

Tuesday Morning Wha’??

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On Tuesday morning, October 8, 2024, God (Of any denomination) saw fit to install a rainbow outside the balcony of my apartment. It was awesome. Spectacular. Divine. It was full size and the entire arc of its beautiful design could be traced with my finger. I took lots of pics and videos but mainly stood there, jaw dropped, while the camera clicked away. The rainbow was so bright…and it had a partner. The second rainbow ran parallel to the first for most of the arc of the first, but didn’t have enough oomph to make it all the way. For moment I felt bad for the second, but then remembered There’s Two rainbows outside my window!

Never, ever have I witnessed two rainbows at once. Not in over 72 years filled with rainstorms, morning afters, and weather catastrophes. Never. even after Our Tornado this summer.

The colorful entities filled me with a sense of wonder lasting hours, and never fully dissipated until after the hours of rain the rainbows had presaged. There was a feeling of satisfaction, too, that someone, somewhere, felt I deserved not one, but two morning rainbows. My life on earth is being monitored and appreciated. The Boss had noticed my work!

A reason the awe and wonder faded was as the morning went along, I talked with others and they, too, had seen two rainbows…just before the rains. I wasn’t the only one….

Who cares about the others? The rainbows were there for me. The ‘Bows became a sign, an omen, to me. The rainbows were a delight, a blessing, a message to remember what’s important in life, and not stoop to cheating, lying, and taking advantage of others in our modern, self-centered world. And to remember to be happy with enough, and not long for too much more than what we need.

Then, another thing happened: contentment washed over me and settled in my pockets, my hair, and all the horizontal surface areas of my body. Even up my freshly plucked nose and recently shaved ears. I felt it burrow into my beard. It was going to be around for awhile. I wasn’t going to shower, ever.

As with the rest of you, there is a lot going on in our lives. Whatever it is, whatever bothers us, it’s nice to know a rainbow (or two) can make it all go away…for a day or two.

Man…and Woman…Sigh…

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A close, personal relationship just ended. It’s none of your business, but the mechanics of it might be: why is it so hard for men and women to communicate?

The Men from Mars and Women from Venus trope is tired, but true. A better example is the Black Box from management courses. It says we don’t talk to each other, we talk into a Black Box. And the other person doesn’t hear us, they hear what they take out of the Black Box. Is what is said into the Black Box what is heard FROM the Black Box? Very seldom…very, very, seldom.

My recent, personal issue is a text book example. It will be discussed here, in its simplest form, and you can fill in details, you’ve probably all been through the same thing…at some time.

A plan was designed to protect someone. Said “someone” did not understand The Plan. The Plan had to be implemented at a quicker pace due to The Calamities, and so was undertaken without the complete understanding of the “someone”.

The Plan has worked to (nearly) perfection for the “someone”, which makes the planner really happy.

But, sadly, the “someone” still doesn’t understand, and in fact, thinks less of The Plan now that it worked, than the “someone” did before. And thinks even less of the planner.

It’s an interesting dilemma. There is satisfaction The Plan worked, but sadness for the hatred it caused. It’s time for soul-searching. Time to understand what means most in life. Time to suck it up.

Worst of all, here is the only place to tell the story. Hope you don’t mind a really, personal entry. If anything humorous comes to mind, it may break the gloom of the previous stuff, but don’t count on it. Every time feeling sorry tries to hijack my mind, The Plan, and how good it is for “someone”…pleases me. It’s like a yo-yo.

“What we got here is…a failure to communicate. Some (women) you just can’t reach.”

The lessen learned which might be useless this late in life, is doing the right thing might not make you happy. And write stuff down. Use charts. Bullet points. Hand puppets. Anything to make the decisions in life can be successful…for both. But isn’t divorce/breaking up normally better for one than the other?

Whatever. Remember the Black Box. It’s part of your work life, private life, and news feeds. Kidding about the news feeds…maybe.

And apologies, again, for TMI, but there are others going through the same thing, kind of, maybe.

Life. You gotta love it.

Con Temp Late

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Words are fascinating. How did they come to be? Who decided red meant red? Blue, blue? What was the first word ever uttered? “F$%^” when he/she/them stubbed his/her/them’s toe on a rock? Were his/her/them’s companions mortified at the vulgarity? How would they express it? Club to the head? A new, different word?

Would language and communication end if we all spoke a different language? Because we do, but have just enough understanding of basics to function, and most of those understandings are non-verbal: a smile, laughter, crying, actual physical, Three Stooges-violence. (Why, I otta..soytenly.)

The make up of words is fun to talk about. take the title word: Contemplate. An alien with limited knowledge would break the word down like the title. The noun version of Con (Discussion on “parts of speech” will follow after masters degree is finished) means against, Temp means not permanent, and Plate is something we use to eat our food. So the word means we are temporarily against eating off dinnerware? We are against eating off temporary plates?

Another option would be Con tem plate. We are against tem plates? Not another word.

Contemplate has survived attacks like this for centuries and held on to its accepted meaning: “think profoundly and at length”. But, sadly, in this time-sensitive world we live in the only people who have time to contemplate are the elderly, especially those inexorably (please look it up for its exact meaning) approaching senility. It’s all part of the “aged getting wiser” shtick, a myth which does not take into account bitterness, regret, and–worst of all–reminiscing. They take up so much time.

It’s easy to understand the lack of contemplation in youth, they don’t know shit, but why is contemplation not the norm for the engaged? The unemployed? Those inclined to addiction of any sort? And what about psychopaths? Actually, the latter may be excellent contamplators(sic), just in a twisted, unacceptable way.

It stands to reason(Stands? To reasons? Be right back googling. You should, too.) contemplation must be an everyday act, unless a barking dog is running after you. Thinking profoundly before we make make major decisions in life should be the norm. Sadly, my own experience and those of many divorced friends, shows thinking is done, but “profound thinking”? Not so much. (Fact from the infamous internet: 41% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and (bless their hearts!) 73% of third marriages end in divorce.) Don’t ask me…

Politics are where contemplation would be best practiced. All our politicians never seem to contemplate. Ask them a question and you get an immediate answer, either from memory, note binders, or teleprompters. (Are they Pre-contemplators?) Makes no sense, but the stupidest part is we, as voters, accept it.

Forgive me, it’s a beautiful morning and I made the mistake of trying to write something readable, here, before enjoying the sunshine. Should have thought more profoundly…

Whoa…really?

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Night time is a tough time for old people. In the darkness and quiet times we have plenty of opportunity to think. And what do we think about? Hopefully, you’ve read enough to know. It is a running review of the past, present, and future of life, complete with an inner dialogue between two parts of the same brain: a reasonable, intelligent part, and a strange little voice that won’t shut up.

But I was surprised the other night when the little inside voice calmly said this to the rest of me :

“I am ready for death. When it happens I’ll welcome it.”

The inside voice is the mouth in your head that thinks and talks about things your brain tries to keep you from thinking about. The usual conversation for me involves food. My brain says “you’ve had enough, stop eating”, while the inside voice says “man that Klondike Bar was good, lets have another.”

There isn’t a winner in debates between the brain and the inside voice..they tend to reach an agreement, a settlement, a compromise, and life goes on. Sometimes I get the extra Klondike Bar, sometimes I don’t.

So on that fateful night, as I lay awake in the dark thinking of all life’s complexities, my inside voice blurted out the statement noted above.

I sat up in bed and bed and said loudly: “Whoa. Really?”

Yeah. That’s exactly what happened. My brain and inside voice agreed on something and I was the last to know. I was surprised but felt a relief, a peacefulness new to my life. I liked it.

In the light of morning I recalled the night’s events and noted the relief, the peacefulness still filled my body with…well, peace.

Its not easy to comprehend the billions who have died before us, or the billions who will probably die after us, but there is some comfort in knowing they exist. But as someone once said to me: “There’s the past, there’s the present, and there’s the future. Live where your feet are.”

Which reminds me I need new shoes. Slip-ons. No laces.