For the better part of 40 years, I’ve made a pest of myself to poetry lovers. I’ve complained too often that too many poets seem to think they can declare their depth and genius by stringing together words that are incomprehensible and full of themselves.
I don’t like reading anything that has to be explained. Some of it is probably just over my head, but how would I know?
Today, I apologize and make a full confession: I, too, am a recovering poet.
As many of us do I went through my young writer poetry affectation stage back in high school. I just strung together words I liked in strict meter. I still believe that even free verse should have a rhythm, but again, how would I know? I never studied poetry and grew tired of pretense when I started writing plays and sensible prose (both of which I also never studied.)
This is the one poem I wrote that I love and keep. It’s calligraphed and nicely framed and displayed on a wall in our home. I wrote it for my wife, the lovely and feisty CarolAnn Williams, on our first Christmas.
I love and am keeping her, too.
My Christmas Carol
You are Christmas
and I am a child,
enchanted by eyes that sparkle
with the merry shine of a thousand twinkling lights.
As Christmas, you hold secrets:
promises of wonder
in yet unopened gifts.
And I am so filled with joy
that there is no room in me
for fear or despair;
The magic of Christmas is in me!
You put it there.
– For my CarolAnn, my wife.
December 25, 1988
I didn’t do the phrasing. I don’t know where to leave one line and begin another willy-nilly. I guess it’s to look cool. Yet again, how would I know?
I do know that our friend, the late Rosemary Schmidt, understood it. She put my words into attractive (if weird) line breaks while maintaining the meter.
Meter is a big deal to me because I used to be a drummer.
Anyway, I’m open to all the criticism I deserve except for my motive. When you love someone with all your heart, corny metaphors and even some metric missteps are totally acceptable.
The nice woman led me backstage to a new motorhome and indicated that I should go inside.
“This is our green room,” she said with a smile. “Make yourself at home. Somebody will come get you when it’s time.”
I thanked her, stepped up, and opened the door to find Terry Bradshaw alone, sitting behind a small laminated table with two prescription pill bottles in front of him.
Terry Bradshaw
Yes, that Terry Bradshaw: four-time Super Bowl champion quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers, two-time Super Bowl MVP, Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, and the only NFL player with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His blazer lay folded neatly on the seat next to him. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and tie. He looked up and flashed a polite, though barely sincere, smile.
“Hey, how are ya?”
“Fine, thanks. I’m Dave Williams. I’m your emcee. They told me I should wait here until it’s time.”
I did not offer him my hand because I was a social dork, and he was Terry Bradshaw holding a prescription pill bottle.
“It’s a pleasure and an honor to meet you,” I added impetuously.
“Thanks. Same here.”
As I sat on the RV sofa opposite him, Terry twisted open an orange plastic Rx bottle, shook out a couple of tablets, and swallowed them with a swig of water from a plastic bottle.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I didn’t.
We didn’t have mobile phones in the late 90s. I couldn’t look down, pretending to be engaged in some serious business matter, and neither could he. But Terry finally broke the silence when he tossed back another pill from the other bottle.
“I have a pounding headache,” he explained.
I think I told him I was sorry, but I’m not sure. And there we sat, total strangers with nothing in common and nothing to say to each other.
Looking back on it, I would like to think he was pleased that I didn’t start peppering him with lame football fan questions. I might have if I had been a serious football fan, but to this day, I can’t watch a game without wondering why it takes 22 guys banging into each other to advance or stop the ball. Wouldn’t three guys on each side work just as well? Maybe I should have asked him that.
Terry took a stack of index cards from his jacket pocket and started looking them over. I assumed he was studying his speech, which was a great idea. I took out my one index card with my prepared introduction and studied its three sentences.
There was a tap at the door. Being closest to it and not being a famous athlete and TV star, I stood and opened it to find John Major, the most recent former British Prime Minister, standing on the step below with a pip-pip-cheerio smile on his Time magazine face.
I was literally looking down at him.
“Might I come in?”
John Major
As he entered, he explained, “I’m a speaker today. I was told to wait here.”
He did offer me his hand, and I took it.
“John Major,” he said.
I honestly don’t remember what I said, but I think it was something like, “Yes, of course, Mr. Prime Minister. I’m a local radio star, and I’ll be introducing you.”
On second thought, I hope I didn’t actually say, “I’m a local radio star.”
Whatever I said, the PM made his way in. He and Terry shook hands and exchanged a few effusively gracious words, as is the practiced habit of famous people when they first meet.
I was the fly on the wall.
I am dying to tell you about the fascinating conversation the three of us had over the next half hour, but there’s nothing to tell. As hard as I try, I can’t recall or even imagine anything that we would have said to each other.
I was eventually called to the stage and introduced Terry to the large, expensive lunch crowd. They loved him. He was charming and funny; that’s all I remember.
I did not go back to the Winnebago to shoot the shit with former PM Major. I’m pretty sure I walked to the no-host bar in the back of the room and asked for a beer.
I just learned something from my son. He’s older and wiser than me now.
We had a public disagreement on Facebook, and he really let me have it. It hurt, though that wasn’t his intent. The details don’t matter; they’re just between us. The point is that he taught me something.
For the sake of this essay, I’ll call my son Jeremy because that’s his name.
I’m 73, and Jeremy’s 47, but sometimes I still think of him as a kid.
I do, but I don’t. It’s complicated.
I knew he was an adult when he went off to college nearly 30 years ago, but that’s where most of my personal memories of him end. That’s where we started to grow apart.
The tricky thing about parenting is that you have two lifelong relationships with your children: when they need you and when they don’t. It’s the whole point of parenting, right? Give them what they need and then let them go on to live their own lives.
Forty years after this picture, Jeremy has a long, happy marriage and a brilliant adult child of his own. In many ways, he’s the finest man I know. And sure, I take some credit, but just a bit. He also has a mother, a stepmother, teachers, friends, and a thousand other inspirations I know nothing about.
Children grow up and fly away from the nest, but as just one parent, your relationship is grounded in the past of birthday parties, Christmas mornings, and teary, skinned knees. You try to hold onto that feeling but reach a point where your heart can’t follow.
We stay in touch, but sometimes I need to be reminded that my son hasn’t lived with me for well over half of his life.
“You have nothing in common but his childhood.”
My wife of 37 years lovingly explained that to me a few nights ago.
Jeremy and I still love and respect each other. We just told each other so. And in the wisdom of age, we’re probably closer now than ever.
It starts on a specific though unpredictable day each August when midday shadows suddenly become a bit softer. It’s very subtle, but I notice it every year. The season is changing.
September anticipates the serene melancholy of fall. Squirrels get busy stocking up for winter—we all do. We pull out the summer clothes from our closets and fluff up our long-sleeved flannel. We look at the mess in the garage and think about paring it all down.
Where are those Christmas lights? I need to find them.
Looking forward to what comes next is natural whether we’re thinking about next weekend, the holidays, or a spring vacation we’re planning. But as I get older, now that I’m paying attention, I’ve started anticipating each new tomorrow and discovering small things I’ve always seen but never really noticed.
Anticipation is what makes life worth living. Best of all, it’s personal. As my dear friend and blogging partner Anita Garner so eloquently put it:
“Anticipation is the only thing I can control. It’s the looking-forward-to part of life and I get to decide when it starts and what it means.”
That sentence is what inspired my thoughts here and many more. If we have your attention, read Anita’s wonderful perspective here:
Email regret, Faha rain, and my friendships with Ed and Niall.
I got an email from Ed Pyle this morning. It arrived with perfect timing and placement, in the middle of my stack of electronic junk mail just as I was settling in with my sunrise coffee. Ed’s note rescued me from the spam before my mind got busy with to-do lists, before the day got cluttered.
Ed rarely sends me emails and his subject heading was everything a good headline should be, curious and intriguing: “Email and THE book”, it read. Otherwise, the message content was just a link with no greeting, no explanation, and no signature.
Wary 21st-century cyber sleuth that I am I was suspicious that it might be a phishing lure and not a note from my friend. Knowing better than to click on unexpected links I followed the clue visible in the URL to a thoughtful New York Times article by best-selling author Ann Patchett.
Sadly the Times has a paywall so I’ll give you a summary in case you don’t have or want a subscription.
Patchett was asked to admit a single regret and she thought long and hard before deciding her greatest regret in the past 30 years is email. Her explanation cited my favorite book This Is Happinessby Irish novelist Niall Williams.
“As though an infinite store had been discovered, more and more stars kept appearing,” Noe says about the nights in Faha. “The sky grew immense. Although you couldn’t see it, you could smell the sea.”
That’s the way it was in Provincetown, the way it was in Ireland, and I’m sure that’s the way it is now, except that if I were now in Provincetown or Ireland on a clear night, I’d probably be at my computer checking my email. I love email, and I hate email.
Our modern toys and magical conveniences have ensnared us. That’s Patchett’s point and the understated subplot of This Is Happiness. Ed Pyle sent me a pristine hardbound first edition when it came out a few years ago and we are both still enchanted by it.
…unashamed romance for a nostalgic tradition of storytelling, where exaggeration and eye twinkles might in fact just bring you closer to the truth. Sublime.’ —Hilary White, IRISH INDEPENDENT
Ed was my boss before he became my friend. It wasn’t until a few years after we parted daily company in a radio station newsroom that we began swapping notes on Facebook. They led to mutual affection for our shared sense of humor and search for insight.
This Is Happiness satisfied my hunger but it also made me crave more of Williams’ unhurried talent for meandering through a story without jolts and flashes of overwrought drama. His stories don’t grab you, they seep in like a soft nourishing Irish rain. I quickly read everything Niall Williams has ever written and fell in love with the writer and maybe the man himself.
Then I took an online fiction writing class from Niall, a weekly meeting inside his Kiltumper home via real-time face-to-face encounters with the author and some ten or twelve other students. He taught us to write by writing. We read our work to the class and Niall shared with us his wisdom.
That was happiness.
The brevity of Ed’s email and the terms of Patchett’s regret made me realize I need to spend more time reaching out to friends in person when possible or by phone and less often by computer. I am vowing to use text messaging only for “Yes,” “No,” and “Can I call you?” And while I love nothing more than sitting at my keyboard, spilling my thoughts as I feed my mind, I will save time every day for engaging the world outside. I will continue to talk with my prized hibiscus. Dog walkers will get a wave and a greeting from me. Conversations will be ignited and strangers will become rewarding acquaintances.
Some may even become cherished friends like Ed, Niall, and me.
This is an abbreviated portion of a chapter from a book I’m writing. As slowly as I write I figured I might as well put this much in blog form. Maybe it will encourage me to get on with it.
Surviving Childhood
One of the things we aging boomers love to talk about is how much safer the world used to be when we were kids.
I guess it was in some respects. Mostly, though, I wonder how we survived. As kids in the 1950s and 60s we were allowed to roam our entire neighborhood from sunup to sundown free from fear of death or kidnapping. Nobody was ever snatched off the street.
We didn’t have drive-by shootings. Heck, we didn’t have drive-thru hamburger joints. Back then if you wanted to buy a burger or shoot somebody you had to park the car and get out first.
It was a simpler, more forgiving time. But it was also a daily horror show we never even noticed.
Cars didn’t have seat belts until the mid-sixties and by then they seemed silly to those of us who grew up literally bouncing between the back and front seats as our parents sped along two-lane highways. They didn’t mind in the least as long as we didn’t start fighting.
Enough protection to stop you from shoving a kitten or puppy in there but little hands were welcome.
We had room fans with no protective covers to keep little fingers out of the whirling steel blades. If you had invented the electric fan doesn’t a protective cage over the front just seem like a natural piece of the big picture? How did they not think of that?
I never heard of a single injury.
The heat in our homes came up from the floor through metal grates that got hot enough to sear a waffle pattern into tender toddler butts and feet.
Everybody smoked cigarettes, cigars and pipes everywhere. I mean everywhere: on buses and trains; in grocery stores, movie theaters, restaurants, churches and in every room of every home in America. That’s where this attachment to “fresh air” started, you know. Think about it. No matter where you live these days, big city or wide-open spaces, the air is no fresher outside than it is inside.But you still say, “I need some fresh air,” and then you step out of a filtered, air-conditioned room into downtown San Bernardino. When we stepped outside in the fifties it was like walking into the Alps. Nobody complained about smoke. It was just a natural part of life.
Dogs ran free when we were kids.
You’d let the dog out and he was gone to who-knows-where until he eventually came back to the porch and waited happily to be readmitted to the house. That might be the next day or the day after that. If he bit somebody while he was out you never heard about it. They didn’t sue, they just swore. If he tangled with another dog you’d see him trot back into the house at dinner time, tongue and tail wagging joyously, with one bloody ear and a mangled eyeball. You didn’t take him to the vet unless he’d been hit by a car and even then if he could hobble out of the street on three of his four legs Skippy was good to go.
We had deadly toys.
We would have wars using air-powered BB-rifles that allowed us to fire tiny steel balls with enough velocity to embed them under the skin of another kid, a dog or a cat. It stung but we loved it. This is where we first heard the sentence, “You could put an eye out with that!” But nobody I knew ever lost an eye to a BB-gun assault.
If there weren’t enough BB-guns to go around, we’d just throw rocks. Seriously, rock fights. And worse.
We had toy bows and arrows. Oh sure, the arrows had rubber cups on the end. You just took those off, threw ‘em away and whittled the wooden shaft into a pencil-sharp point.
We had firecrackers. We made bottle rockets out of wooden match heads cautiously jammed tightly together into glass aspirin bottles. When they weren’t made carefully they became instant bombs, igniting in hand and shooting shards of red-hot glass dozens of feet in all directions.
I’m not making this up.
One idiot kid I remember used to lie down on the ground and have the rest of us drop a huge rock — say, the size and weight of a bowling ball — right over his face. He’d always roll out of the way before the rock hit the ground. He never failed.
We climbed trees, great cottonwoods in my grandparents’ front yard, scampering twenty feet above the ground. Once I fell, skinning my bare back as I slid down the trunk of that great tree, landing hard on its exposed roots. Grandma sprayed Bactine on my injuries and gave me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white Wonder bread. I watched Popeye on TV and felt a lot better.
We jumped off the roof of my grandparents’ house with totally ineffective home-made parachutes fashioned from a bed sheet with ropes tied to the corners. One of my goofy cousins used to climb onto the sloped roof of their two-story house and bounce up there on his pogo stick.
We made go-carts out of two-by-fours and orange crates with tin coffee can lids for headlights and roller skates for wheels. A steep hill provided propulsion, a rope tied to each side of the front axle made for a delicate steering mechanism that was just as likely to dump you into the middle of oncoming traffic as it was to steer you out of danger. There was no braking system. For that you merely had to wait until the thing slowed of its own diminishing inertia or crashed into a parked car.
When I was a kid we had plenty of playgrounds in our neighborhoods and schoolyards were never enclosed by locked fences and gates. Still, we often just played baseball or football in the street. A parked car was first base or end zone marker. Second base was a smashed tin can; a water spigot was third. We played with broken wooden bats that had been glued, nailed and taped back into service. The baseball had ripped seams and a cover peeling off. Once the tear got so big the ball made a fluttering sound when thrown we’d peel it off completely and wrap the remaining ball of yarn into a solid mass of black electrician’s tape that needed to be repaired or replaced after bouncing along the pavement a few times. Any baseball becomes hard to see after sunset, especially one made of black tape but we played long after daylight had faded to deep purple and the cars rounding the corner into left field had their headlights on.
As I think back on those days fifty-plus years ago I can’t remember any boys who didn’t have patched jeans and scabs on their knees and elbows. Many of the girls, too. Blood was simply a part of everyday life through no small fault of our own. We all fell off our bikes into asphalt and parked cars because were just clutzy kids. Occasionally one of the real numbskulls in the neighborhood would intentionally ride his bike off the roof of a house or try to leap a row of thorn-laden rose bushes on a bike with the help of a pathetically engineered plywood ramp. These stunts nearly always ended in bloody failure but they didn’t stop us from trying again.
Nobody died. We seldom cried. And now we worry about our own kids and theirs.
I know, I know – as an old man I’m supposed to harp philosophically and say things like “age is only a number” and “you’re as young as you feel”. Those cliches are true but they feel too modest.
It’s my birthday! That makes me happy, I feel special today and am old enough to admit it.
Please indulge me just for a moment while I talk about the things old people always talk about, though we’d rather not. There is a point to all of this.
A year ago, just before my 72nd birthday, I had a health scare that ended with the great news that there was nothing wrong with my heart or brain. How many people get that kind of reassurance into their eighth decade?
That led me to retire from my radio career, a heads-up that it was time to get off the rat wheel and make every day Saturday. CarolAnn and I don’t have the money to go gallivanting around the world as future retirees dream. I still want to take a great vacation when we can but I love my wife, our dogs, and our home. A lot of people have none of that.
In the past month I’ve been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes and nearly simultaneously had all of my teeth extracted to make room for dentures. I was born without teeth and that’s how I’ll go out. Wish it could be otherwise but you know what the older old folks used to say, “You can wish in one hand and spit in the other…”
I don’t remember how that ended. It never made any sense to begin with.
Diabetes is manageable and the dentures will be useful when my gums no longer hurt and I learn to eat without feeling like I’m chewing with a mouthful of Legos.
An aside: If you’re looking for a dead solid perfect weight loss diet try combining sugar and carb restrictions for diabetics with the severe limitations of eating without teeth. In six weeks I’ve lost 35 pounds!
So, yeah, I’m thrilled to be 73. My dad died five months before he got there. That weighed on my mind for most of the past year, it really did, for two reasons: At first I was merely hoping that I wouldn’t keel over as early as he did. Then it finally dawned on me that Dad would be over the moon in love with the fact that I outlived him. For some reason that makes me proud.
Dad and me c. 1953, Land Park, Sacramento
I still talk to my dad. Not out loud but whenever I have a question I know he could answer, I ask him. I can hear his wise and loving answer as plainly as if he was here in the room.
I hope to live another 20 or 30 years. I’ll probably be lucky to manage another 10. But if I should pass and anyone asks, you tell them I died a happy man. No matter when or how it happens it will be true.
I’ve crossed the finish line. Now I’m just taking victory laps.
We say we’re “getting” old because we don’t know exactly when old happens and we keep pushing it back. I’m about two weeks from my 73rd birthday and still waffling on the definition of old. But along the way, I’ve gotten some physical bulletins that are impossible to ignore.
Unlike everyone my age I know, I will share my experience with you. You’re welcome.
The first heads-up was realizing that I need to take advantage of every public bathroom I see, whether or not I feel the need because when I do feel the need, it might well be too late.
Why didn’t somebody warn me about that? It seems like it would have been a neighborly heads-up between “getting old” friends. Just tell me, “You’re going to start leaking if you don’t pee in every nearby urinal or toilet.” That seems like a polite piece of advice, doesn’t it? Tell your friends.
A few days ago I had my remaining teeth taken out of my head. I now have no, zero, teeth.
The back story is lifelong, I’ve always had lousy teeth. Even as a child of the 50s, I had many cavities and horrific experiences with Dr. Clifford and his slow, smoke-emitting drill.
I’ve always brushed. I have occasionally flossed, (wink-wink). But while other people went in for semi-annual checkups I stayed away because nothing in my mouth ever hurt even as my teeth simply began disintegrating for no apparent reason.
I had one tooth break while I was eating soft, non-crunchy ice cream. A couple of years ago I found a broken tooth in my mouth while I was sleeping. WTF?
So, CarolAnn and I decided it would be best, and ultimately cheaper, if I would just yank ‘em all and get dentures.
As of three days ago, I have no teeth but expensive dentures that look like those wind-up chattering toys we’ve all seen.
So many things people don’t explain as you get older. And the websites don’t help because they’re written with AI prompts by marketing pros 50 years younger than you are. Some of them still have baby teeth.
The good news is that my dentist, periodontist, and oral surgeon, all enriched by my patronage, agree that the procedures thus far have gone perfectly.
The bad news is my gums are now swollen and painful. I talk like Daffy Duck, lithping and thputtering. Trying to eat soft food like a banana with new dentures is the same as chewing with a mouthful of Legos.
Look, as I told my dentist, Joe Smith (yes, his real name), just yesterday, I don’t get all twisted over things I can’t change. It is what it is. I’m alive, reasonably alert, and happy.
The professionals tell me things in my mouth will get better. I paid to trust and believe them.
But you know what? Either way, I wake up every morning with my wife beside me, the dogs are ready to be let outside to pee, and then I make their breakfast and my coffee.
(This piece was originally self-published at LinkedIn.com)
When I was a kid I lived to play baseball.
If our team lost, too bad. I really didn’t care much.
When our high school team lost, while the other kids were cursing and slamming bats, I was laughing and chattering about the exciting moments of the game. This annoyed my coaches and my teammates thought I was a loser.
Why are humans so competitive? Why do we fight to win everything from board games with the family to business deals and meaningless arguments with our friends? As it was with baseball, my attitude has always been you try to win because that’s the point of the game – but it’s just a game. If it’s time well spent and you did your best, good enough. Shrug it off and move on.
Why are people self-centered to the point of defensive bragging? What is it about the ego that frequently overrides our desire to learn from each other by our desperate need to insist we know best, even as we know we’re wrong?
I’ve always wondered about this stuff. Now, social media have brought these questions front and center.
Perfectly nice people in real life become brutal monsters on Twitter. They say things with their keyboards they would never say with their eyes.
Quiet people who “always kept to themselves ” suddenly walk into a grade school armed to the teeth and commit unimaginable atrocities.
As my Dallas radio partner, Amy Chodroff, often wonders aloud, “What’s wrong with people?”
What’s wrong, indeed?
I’m almost 72. I suppose I could go back to school and pursue the psychology degree I considered 55 years ago. Maybe I will but most likely I won’t. For now, I took my search for answers to our new technological Wizard of Oz, ChatGPT.
Why are people ego-centric and competitive?I asked.
Here’s the A.I. Big Brain Answer:
The ego-centric and competitive tendencies observed in people can be attributed to a combination of various factors, including evolutionary biology, socialization, cultural influences, and individual psychology. Here are some key reasons why people may exhibit ego-centric and competitive behaviors:
Evolutionary Biology: From an evolutionary perspective, competition has played a significant role in the survival and reproduction of our species. Throughout history, individuals who were more competitive and focused on their own needs and resources had a higher chance of passing on their genes. This has led to the development of certain ego-centric and competitive tendencies in humans.
Socialization and Upbringing: The way individuals are raised and socialized within their families, communities, and societies can significantly shape their behaviors and attitudes. In many cultures, competition is encouraged and valued as a means of achieving success, recognition, and status. This socialization can foster ego-centric and competitive mindsets.
Cultural Influences: Cultural factors play a significant role in shaping people’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. In some cultures, individualism and self-interest are highly valued, which can contribute to ego-centric tendencies. Similarly, cultures that emphasize competition and achievement may foster a more competitive mindset among individuals.
Psychological Factors: At the individual level, certain psychological factors can contribute to ego-centric and competitive behaviors. For example, some individuals may have a strong need for validation, recognition, or power, leading them to prioritize their own interests over others. Additionally, factors like low self-esteem, fear of failure, or a scarcity mindset can drive individuals to compete intensely for resources or success.
Societal Structures and Incentives: Societal structures, such as economic systems or organizational hierarchies, can create environments that foster competition. When individuals are rewarded based on their individual achievements or when resources are perceived as limited, it can fuel ego-centric and competitive behaviors as people vie for success, promotions, or other rewards.
It’s important to note that while ego-centric and competitive tendencies are common, they are not universal to all individuals. People vary in their levels of competitiveness, and factors like empathy, cooperation, and altruism are also part of the human experience. Additionally, socialization and cultural shifts can influence the prevalence and manifestation of these behaviors over time.
The answer to my lifelong question spewed forth in less than ten seconds and it makes perfect sense. I always figured that an inherent competitive drive is what enabled primordial life to crawl out of the prehistoric swamp goo, grow feet and hands, grab a stick, and then whack its neighbor.
Game on.
What it doesn’t explain is why our egos impel the most driven of us to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to win.
I suspect something went haywire in our evolutionary process. Morality got short-circuited because it would have just confused our ancestors while they were battling saber-toothed tigers and, later, the Huns for mere survival.
Or, maybe we just haven’t finished figuring it out. Now that we have tigers and Huns out of the way, maybe morality can come off the back burner.
Maybe respect and decency are relatively new ideas and those of us living in our blink-of-a-cosmic-eye lifetime are just starting to integrate them into our nature and the DNA that will eventually confirm our descendants’ progress.
If we can keep from destroying ourselves humanity may have a better, less aggressive, distant future.
But I hope they still play baseball or something like it.
People like to ask what I do every day now that I’m retired. It’s a hard question to answer because I do a lot of things that fascinate me but would sound like a complete waste of time for nearly everyone else.
I do stuff around the house, I write, I watch a little TV, and I nearly always take a nap with the dogs. But you know what I love most? Thinking. It’s something I haven’t had time to enjoy for most of my adult life. It’s the ultimate indulgence.
“Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.” – A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
What amazes me about getting old is the constant revelations of things I never gave much thought to.
Sometimes those revelations only create more and much bigger questions. Physics, for example: the construction and meaning of life. I’ve always been as curious as everyone but shrugged it off as unknowable, and what the hell, let’s order another drink. But recently, as I approach what we all assume will be the end of our existence, it has become a fascinating focus of my curiosity.
Who am/was I and why?
I want to soak up as much information as I can before it all becomes irrelevant.
The last couple of days I’ve been listening to a Lex Fridman podcast in which he talks with astrobiologist and theoretical physicist, Sara Walker. She’s one of those people with an IQ that’s off the charts. People who make the charts don’t know what to do with her. Lex keeps up with her pretty well but I get lost in nearly every exchange.
My progress is slow, the podcast is long. I feel stupid. I don’t know what I’ll take from it when I’ve reached the end but I do know it fascinates me.
I would be content to live retired without much mental stimulation. I love my wife, our dogs, our home, and our family and friends. I enjoy old movies and TV shows as much as the next old fat guy. But thinking about things I don’t understand excites me. It sends me down rabbit holes far more entertaining than the old Star Trek episodes I’ve been binging lately.
I think Sara Walker would agree without having a good handle on it herself.
For the better part of 40 years, I’ve made a pest of myself to poetry lovers. I’ve complained too often that too many poets seem to think they can declare their depth and genius by stringing together words that are incomprehensible and full of themselves.
