The Aging of Aquarius

Did you know that people really do have biological rhythms which define us as morning people or night people? Neuroscientists have discovered some fascinating differences in how our brains are wired.

For one thing, night people apparently get stronger and more energetic as evening grows late. We morning people tend to hit our peak well before noon and then our energy and brain functions level off until drowsiness overtakes us just after the evening meal.

On the other hand, morning people are supposedly happier than night people! Who would have guessed that? I always suspected there was a party starting just as I was going to bed. That’s apparently a large part of the problem for you owls. One study calls it “social jet lag,” a disruption of circadian rhythms caused when you stay up late but are forced by responsibilities to get up early the next morning whether you want to or not.

(And by the way, your grumpiness really puts a damper on our bubbly morning effervescence. Try to keep it to yourself, okay?)

Here’s one final scientific finding that supports everything we’ve long believed: the older we get almost all of us become morning people even if we were night people when we were younger.

Does this sound a bit suspicious to you? I believe the science but the more I read I keep coming back to a physical reality that circadian studies just don’t seem to support.

I’m tired because I’m old. I wake up at four or five a.m. because I fell asleep in front of the TV ten hours ago.

Stick that in your MRI and smoke it.

Cricket, is gone.

I miss her jumping with excitement simply because I’m home from work, and at night when she snuggled in my arm alongside me in bed as we fell asleep together in security and comfort.

She’s not here to gently tap my face with a soft, insistent paw to tell me she’s hungry or thirsty or needs to go outside.

She’ll never lick my nose again to comfort me when I’m sad.

Our baby girl died Thursday.

If you ever had a dog that could make your eyes tear up for no reason but your mutual love; a dog who could lift you from the depths of sadness and pain by simply nudging your face with a cold nose and bright eyes, you are a believer.

For me God has the face and the eternal, unqualified love of a Yorkie named Cricket.

She crawled inside my soul and will live there forever.

This morning on my Dallas radio show I shared the story of a woman in Seattle who has gotten some minor national attention for her resolve to eat every single meal of her life this year at Starbucks. Eleven days into the year she’s apparently on track.

The source story doesn’t say why she wants to do this. She says she’s not employed by Starbucks and isn’t making any money for the stunt but I suspect that’s her plan. We all remember the young guy named Jared who became a spokesman for Subway sandwich shops by losing a boatload of weight eating there. If this is what this Starbucks woman has in mind, I kind of feel bad for her. For one thing, it has already been done. And really, Starbucks doesn’t need any help. They’re so successful they’re opening new stores on both sides of every McDonalds in the world.

The other problem is that for every fru-fru croissant and muffin they put in the display case leading to the cash register Starbucks is still basically a purveyor of coffee. Jared didn’t get the best-balanced diet in the world at Subway but at least he got a reasonable portion of veggies and some protein with his caffeine and carbs. Ms. Existence may find her health flagging by the end of February.

Wait, I didn’t tell you her name, did I? It’s Beautiful Existence.

Apparently that is her legal name and if you’re boringly normal like me your first thought is that she’s a nutball. That’s what I thought. But now, a few hours later, it occurs to me that this woman, for whatever reasons related to her life experience, lives on a different plane than most of us. She travels to the beat of a different drummer. A drummer with a banjo.

My good friend Chuck Woodbury spent many years of his young adult life traveling around the western United States in a motorhome gathering and reporting the stories of such people in a wonderful monthly publication called Out West.  One story was about a young man Chuck met in some small town in Utah or Wyoming. The details escape me but I think this guy’s name was David. He earned a living as a dishwasher in a local cafe. He spent all of his spare time at home, alone, with one of those adding machines from the 80s that kept running tabulations on a long roll of paper. He started with 1+1=2 and proceeded from there to add 1 over and over and over and over and over again.

David had his house filled with carefully cataloged rolls of used adding machine tapes.

Before I left work this morning I wrote and recorded a radio report about Beautiful Existence  for use later in the day. It was a professional, typically sterile radio news story that proudly sucks all the reality and fascination out of life.

But I can’t stop thinking about Beautiful Existence.

She might be a nutball or she might be just a Jared copycat.

David, the adding machine dishwasher, might be a genuine looney from where I sit.

“Crazy” is a slippery word and though I don’t know any of the trials and tribulations of the lives experienced by Beautiful Existence or David the dishwasher, part of me greatly envies them.

They wake up every morning with a plan, they follow through and go to bed each night with a sense of fulfillment.

They serve nobody’s expectations except their own.

If that isn’t life well-lived, what is?

Post script: Beautiful Existence apparently succeeded in having every meal at Starbucks for an entire year. And it seems I misjudged her in my assumption that she was trying to get some big paydays for her stunt. Here’s a follow-up article about her achievement and her future goals. – DW, 2022

And Jesus said to them, Yes; have you never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise? — Matthew 21:16 (American King James Bible)

Two weeks ago tonight Carolann and I drove to Tracy’s and Martha’s house in McKinney to join their semi-weekly Bible study group. This will come as a surprise to our family and friends in California because we’re not church-goers but we’re not heathens, either. We’re quiet believers.

And frankly, more to the point, we’re new to Texas and have no social life. We need to meet people.

So, there we were, eight or ten of us having snacked and socialized, now seated together in our friends’ living room engrossed in the book of Daniel and sharing The Word.

Tracy and Martha’s eight-year-old daughter Sadie was upstairs in her room, unseen and forgotten.

The Good Book is passed to our new friend, Mike.

(A dog barks in the backyard. Sadie yells at the dog through her upstairs window, telling him to be quiet.)

Mike reads.

MIKE: “Ezekiel describes his vision of God…

(The dog begins baying outside.)

MIKE:  “A voice came from above…”

(Upstairs, to the dog…)

SADIE: “SHUT UP YOU RETARD!!!”

We’ll try to pick it up at that point tonight. I’m praying that Sadie is there.

Yesterday I took my first official Texas road trip, not counting the one that got me here in the first place. I drove a hundred miles from our new home just north of Dallas to visit a friend in Waco and I left early enough to stop and see a place I’ve wanted to see for years: Abbott, Texas. It’s a town of 356 people and just one sad little remnant of an old general store as its only operating business establishment. In that, Abbott is like a million other far-flung places in this huge and proud state with one distinction:

Abbott is the birthplace and childhood home of Willie Nelson.

The most striking thing about Willie’s hometown is that unlike similarly distinguished small towns in America it doesn’t display one single word about its famous son. There are no statues or museums or souvenir stores and not a single sign proudly proclaiming, “Birthplace of Willie Nelson!” Not a word. You either know it or you don’t. I suppose the quiet, hard-working Texans who live here prefer not to have their few streets choked with tourists taking pictures of local kids playing in  the streets and fields without asking permission. In that respect Abbott maintains its charm and dignity. It certainly looks the same now as it did eighty some years ago when Willie and his piano playing sister Bobbie were born there.

The Depression-era Abbott Methodist Church*, where Willie and Bobbie sang hymns when they were both just knee-high to a June bug, sits directly across the street from the Abbott Baptist Church. These are by far the best-kept buildings in town. They are postcard-perfect visions of Americana brought to life, old yet gleaming white buildings with gloriously pious steeples and neatly trimmed lawns.

I took my pictures surreptitiously, not wanting to draw attention. My self-consciousness was unnecessary. I never saw a person on the street nor outside of the scattered handful of homes in the neighborhood.

It was Saturday and 109 degrees. Cicadas sang love songs.

I went into the Abbott Cash Grocery Market to buy a cold soda pop and just to be able to say I had been there. The store was sad. Most of the shelves were empty. What few items it did carry were all packaged goods crammed together: toilet paper and dishwashing detergent right next to the canned okra and lima beans. No meat or produce. They did carry soft drinks and snacks and a few staples such as sugar and flour that a local woman fixing Sunday dinner might need in a rush. No doubt folks there drive to Waco supermarkets and Walmart for real groceries.

Inside the store I was again struck by the lack of highly conspicuous Willie business. Yes, the word, “Willie’s” hangs discreetly above the awning outside but if you didn’t know differently you’d assume it was the owner’s name, not THE Willie. Fact is, I have no idea what it means*. His voice wasn’t floating out of any overhead speakers. Nothing was. There were no lifesize cardboard cutouts where I might have the lone clerk snap a cute picture of me smiling alongside the Redheaded Stranger. They did have a very short shelf stacked with Willie Nelson t-shirts and video tapes but again, no signs to draw your attention and no explanation as to why the stuff was there if you didn’t already know.

I’m ashamed to admit that I wanted a shirt or a ballcap from this secretly famous old store but was too embarrassed to reveal myself as the tourist I was to give that nice lady some money, which she surely needed. Today I’m sorry about that.

But as Willie sings it in one of his best, lesser-known songs:

“Regret is just a memory written on my brow, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

UPDATE: (*In 1976 Willie and sister Bobbie bought the Abbott Methodist Church – shown here – to preserve and maintain it, which he has surely done. At the same time they purchased the General Store and turned it over to the church. That explains the relatively inconspicuous name, “Willie’s” above the awning.)