On Being Vintage

My life no longer feels like my own, not the original life where I spent countless hours in galleries enjoying the inspiration of visual artists. I could fill their canvases with my words and tell a story so elaborate, it would make the birds sing with happiness. Now though, my legs object to the miles of gallery hopping and other galloping endeavors. They scream from pain at night and threaten to stroll into the misty land of my imagination where nothing bad happens allowing my legs to dangle smugly over a rock while I sit staring at the ocean. My fantastical world is devoid of aging and scientists who insist on carbon dating anything that moves and even the trees who wish to remain unbothered by hacksaws and spectrometry.

Now close to seventy, I must settle for small pleasures. The other morning, I found myself delighted over discovering I could lightly blend peanut butter in my chocolate smoothie and suck it through a straw making it taste like a Reese’s Cup. This thrilled me until remembering the days when staring at a Georgia O’Keefe hanging on the wall of MOMA moving on to get a gander of Klee, Picasso, and Chagall. The colors danced around me, but now they only live in my imagination and the picture books laying nearby on a cluttered coffee table. I wondered if I could settle for small pleasures and what would they be. I tried knitting once but inadvertently stabbed my cat Leo with a needle. How was I to know he slept among the yarn balls thinking himself safe from a harsh world. I put away my knitting needles and decided to spend more time playing with my dog Bodhi. Leo sometimes joins us when the spirit moves him, but mostly he idles away his day sleeping on top of a perch or watching the chipmunks digging holes in my potted plants.

The inconvenience of living in my imagination requires me to leave once in awhile to go to the doctor’s office, a fearful place where unexpected things happen, which run the risk of dampening my day with the dismal state of my body. Outwardly, it is a nice body, in good shape from years of yoga and being nearly vegan to avoid harming the animals. In fact, I gave my doctor instructions not to use any medicine that wasn’t cruelty free. I think he dreads my visits. I always insist he consult the Merck Manual for the origins of the drugs he is about to prescribe. He stares at me over his glasses and groans quietly, finally leaves the room, and when he returns, he says, “I think it would be best if you meditate more.” Of course, his words thrill me, and I go home to sit in stillness, enjoying the higher realms where beauty eclipses the artful canvases, and my mind stays quiet long enough to enjoy the present moment.

~

Some therapists call meditation spiritual bypass. The first time I heard this term, it made me laugh out loud. I considered it short-sighted and obviously a term garnered from a shallow mind that failed to study the saints and mystics of times gone by. Even Jesus himself spent nineteen years in contemplation, but when I spout off about the wonderment of Jesus’s walkabout in India, people stare at me in disbelief. I ignore their doubts and soldier on in admiration of a child who left home at such a young age to gain spiritual insight from his elders, finally stumbling across John the Baptist who helped him gain the power that brought him celestial fame. So given this news, how could an entire profession overlook the hundreds of holy beings with long grey beards and no recorded history of depression from growing old. Therapists think they have the answers but are often bored with their clients rambling on about hardships that would tax an elephant’s patience. But then, elephants have their own problems and often slumber in the higher realms where divinity gives them a much-needed respite from mean people and jungle cats.

My own brief foray into psychoanalysis nearly drove my therapist to distraction. She constantly cancelled appointments and sometimes failed to appear. A lesser person would feel rejected, but I sensed a downtrodden spirit full of doubt and harried from my verbal antics that called her on the carpet for considering herself inherently wise rather than someone who parroted the constructs in her field’s textbooks. Finally, I fired her for lack of interest despite my growing fondness for a well-meaning but misguided person of genuine emotion.

My doctor’s assessment of my need to meditate more than my usual two hours demonstrates a mind that can expand beyond his pill bottles and cat scans. I would have to be on death’s door before disturbing my body with toxic substances and then am limited, as mentioned, to the ones branded cruelty free. Why would I want to kill an animal for my own good health? Wouldn’t killing a vibrant being cause harm to my psyche further shoving me into an abyss of despair? Yes, I believe him to be a brilliant gentle man who sees me as a necessary annoyance or perhaps a challenge of a positive sort. Recently, he has become a vegetarian. I often wonder if my refusal to take advice from a carnivore prompted the change in his diet. I probably give myself too much credit here and think it would be best to assume that he saw the light.

~

Leaning into old age frightens me with the prospect of losing my wits, and not to mention, a dentist taking a jack hammer to my teeth looming in an ominous horizon. I must confess I often live in the land of denial where pretty grey heads reside in harmony with the younger generations and are respected for their wisdom. Dentists and doctors do not exist in the land of denial where everyone sips on natural tonics making themselves high as well as healthy. I also lied about my age when social media asked for a date of birth. My real age would result in pop-ups of medical equipment and grandma dresses. The only problem stemming from this subterfuge is my not being old enough to have given birth to my grown son. Now, it’s necessary for my son to pose as a younger man full of spirit instead of nearing middle age, a state resulting in one appearing slightly worn around the edges. Fortunately, he is accustomed to my eccentricities and has learned to take them in stride and often treats me as though I am nearly normal.

I blame advertising for the folly of society placing so much importance on youth. The pretty magazine pictures reflect a haven where only good things happen and no one feels the twinges of old age and the years that have slipped by without notice. Unfortunately, these are all lies, leaving our young people in a muddle of self-doubt heavily dependent on their electronic distractions. Nobody promised us a rose garden, but they have not made it easy for us to cultivate a happy place abundant with flowers and songbirds and no mirrors to reflect tired faces lined from hard work and disappointment.

I often turn to my friend Betty when experiencing an existential crisis. Perhaps, I am being dramatic but fortunately Betty is a patient friend and sits quietly while I ramble on about the duality of being human but occasionally feeling the lightness of originating from a mystical heavenly place that begs for us to be good. I tell Betty the word ‘good’ is overused by sanctimonious pious people who insist we are all inherently ‘good’. I throw a leg over my high horse and continue in this vein until I’ve annihilated half the population for insisting the rest of us can do better.

“Do better? In what way?” Betty asks. While Betty may possess a heavy intellect, her morals are sometimes lax with fluid ego boundaries that your average woman would be hard pressed to find acceptable. She was often called the town pump downhome where we grew up. I consider this another duality that nags us to ‘do better’.

“Oh, you know, the people who criticize original thinking and a spirit that flutters above the laws of what they call ‘family values’. Frightening really, don’t you think?”

“I try not to think,” she says matter-of-factly. “What’s really bothering you?”

“Growing old.” I can hear myself sigh over admitting this fragility of reason.

“Oh, darlin, you have always known your time here is limited. So don’t ruin it with fear.” Betty pulls a tube of red lipstick from her purse and brightens a plump mouth bowed perfectly like a 1940s ingénue waiting for her close-up. She has a lovely face, slightly ethereal with light blue eyes and skin whiter than a can of ceiling paint. Her natural beauty rests in a smile that leaves men breathless and women feeling good from the radiance of her loving heart. Yes, while Betty may have been called the town pump, she was also generous and would serve a stranger a bowl of soup she made from her garden vegetables. Everyone loved her. I often envied Betty but felt fortunate to call her my friend. Now, we are old together with me needing a handout of Betty’s bounteous love.

“Yes, of course, I just never gave it much thought, and now it’s all I can think about.” Again, I could hear myself sigh.

“What would you like to do that you can’t do at your age?” She asks. Like me, Betty is physically limited and can no longer travel the world to study the linguistic development of other cultures. She is at present teaching anthropology in a prestigious college and writing a book for Oxford University Press entitled The Sounds of Language. She never refers to age as a deterrent to globetrotting, but rather calls it a time of academic reflection.

“I would like to hike the Appalachian trail,” I say this with conviction.

She looks surprised and then laughs. “Why? You grew up there.” She laughs some more.

“Because I can’t.” Only your closest woman friend could elicit the truth of the matter. A psychotherapist could probe my inner recesses for months and not ferret out an insight that might shed some light on my current malaise.

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