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Old Age 7/30/2006 4:41:30 PM
More thoughts from this side of the grave SYMPTONS OF OLD AGE
Chronic fatigue
Chronic pain
Declining mental and physical strength
Increasing detachment from life
Time speeds up and space shrinks
Loss of desire and appetite
It's a strange thing about hunger when you're old; you don't really feel hunger, you just feel sick, and know it is time to eat, to relieve that sick feeling.
BODIES LIKE LEAD
Their bodies are like lead. (Line from "Old Folks," one of the songs in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, translated by Eric Blau)
This heaviness of the body is a true phonomemon of aging. The body, indeed, does feel like lead. It is so hard to move it at times; I suppose because all our muscles are atrophying. You might have wished at times when you were young, that you could be so relaxed. But this is strange. I have reached the "Help me, I can't get up stage." Need something to cling to to pull myself up, or need someone to lift me. It happened the other evening. The younger person was truly surprised that I was so heavy (because I couldn't use my own muscles to help him lift). Ah, well...aging!
THE ACADEMIC
The academic parades his knowledge as thought;
but of course it isn't.
WAITING
They sit at a table in the shadows at the edge of the woods, waiting.
Socrates and Freud and others I can't make out,
waiting for me.
WORK IN PROGRESS
John Adams, Architect of Freedom. A Brief Life for the Young Adult Reader. Should run about 45,000 words; should be finished by the end of the year.
OLD AGE
This long decay and dying we call old age can, at times, be quite depressing. The world we knew dissociates from us, and we, it is becoming quite apparent, must die alone. No one can do it for us; each of our dyings, for that reason, is quite unique.
I happen to be rereading the Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy, a poet I remember admiring very much, and came upon this, a poem of his youth, which, seeing the old from the outside, illustrates my axiom below that no one can understand the old except the old.
THE SOULS OF OLD MEN
Inside their worn, tattered bodies
dwell the souls of old men.
How unhappy the poor things are
and how bored by the pathetic life they live.
How they tremble for fear of losing that life, and how much
they love it, those befuffled and contradictory souls, sitting -- half comic and half tragic --
inside their old, threadbare skins.
(But nice anyhow, isn't it?)
Old age is something else. A whole new country. Until you get there, you will not understand it. Too many books about old age are written by people in their 60s; and they ain't seen nothing yet. The central key to old age, and its understanding, is energy, the lack thereof. From that pretty much all else ensues. Most writers about old age focus on the symptons, the loss of sexuality, of appetite (not everyone loses this), the ills that flow from the body's inabiliy to fight germs. Old age is a time of decay, but most people focus on the physical, and either ignore, are not ware of, the mental decay. We are like old machines that are wearing out. The wonder is that the body was able to repair itself for so many years. And so the end comes, not with a bang (in most cases), but with a whimper. And that's what old age is, a preparation for dying. And the final acceptance, the final letting go. As Bette Davis said at 92, though I'm sure it was not original with her, "Old age ain't for sissies." And what is most frightening is its inexorability. There is no cure for old age, but death. I don't believe in a life after death (certainly not the survival of the ego), but I agree with Socrates, when he said, in essence, If there is a life after death, why worry? If there is no life after death, why worry?
Old age, basically, is just a slow dying. The nice thing about it is that it gives you a chance to adjust to the idea of obliteration.
*****
One of the major symptons of old age is chronic pain. Due mainly, I assume, to the fact that the body is just wearing out, especially the joints.
More Blogs by Joseph Cowley • Old Age - Sunday, July 30, 2006 • Old Age - Monday, September 26, 2005 • The Moment - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 • Old Age - Tuesday, March 22, 2005
