Friday, March 07, 2008

Getting Old

My, the things that change as you get older. One of the things that just astonished and delighted me is the natural routine that your life begins to fall into, once you don’t have to fit it into somebody else’s schedule. When you don’t have to be someplace everyday at a certain time and remain stuck there until they say it’s time to quit, when you’re free to follow your own desires, it’s amazing what begins to happen. One of the things that still just takes me by surprise is how little planning I have to do anymore, about anything. Things just happen when they’re supposed to, whether it’s paying the bills, or brushing my teeth, or exercising, or indulging myself with lots of sweets, until I’m tired of them, and you don’t do that for a while. My own routine, if you can call it that, includes these basic activities – lots of attempts to sleep as much as possible, because when you’re asleep, you’re unaware of this world, and my dreams are getting better all the time. I would much rather be in my so-called dream state than in this so-called reality. Although it would seem that I spend a lot of time resting, I don’t really think that I’m spending any more time resting than when I had to do it, you know, when it got dark, until the alarm went off and I had to get up and go to work. It was interesting in those years before I quit work, I was finding it harder to sleep at night, and I can see now that this may not be the natural state for us. Sometimes we need to sleep in the middle of the day, especially in hot climates. I see the wisdom now of the afternoon siesta. I always managed to take a short one, while the kids were at recess. I didn’t take the time to talk to colleagues or to phone any parents. I would lie down on the hard floor and cat nap. About two minutes before the bell would go off, I would wake up and get things ready for the kids to come back in the room. I had to have that time, and when I didn’t, the afternoons were very unpleasant for me and everybody else around me. I also find that music is still a huge part of my life. Almost every day, I sing at the player piano, although, again, there is no definite routine. Sometimes I sing everyday, or even two to three times day, and some days I don’t sing at all, but I keep coming back to it, as I have all my life. I guess as long as I have any energy to move in this world, I will keep going to the player piano or record player or CD player, or to the video player, because of those wonderful musical numbers. Music has always been one of the major facets of my being, and the great frustration is this world has been that I just haven’t had the talent that goes along with the love. I’m trusting that this is going to taken care of in the next world. Another thing that I still like to do on a more or less regular basis is exercise. I’ve gone back to swimming and walking, and I do seem to be more energized when I’m exercising. I guess it’s those wonderful endorphins that they tell us about kicking in. I still love to go to movies. I love storytelling, and I realize now that I’ve been a storyteller and a lover of stories all my life. I loved listening to records that told stories when I was a kid, and mom always managed to get stuff that had lots of music in it, because she knew that my brother and I were into music. The radio was very big at one time in my life and, I think, did a lot to sharpen my imagination. I think that any of us that grew up on old-time radio still really miss it. Occasionally I’ll hear an old program and it’s not really as good as I remember, but there was something about the fact that it was strictly auditory and the visual had to take place in your own mind. Another thing I still like to do is eat. It’s interesting because I don’t really seem to care for the really rich and exotic foods like I used to. It’s pretty much roast and vegetables and grilled chicken and sweets. But what joy I still get in this world from what I am eating at the time. That’s why I indulge myself. That’s why if I would rather make a chocolate cake or a batch of fudge and eat the whole thing in one sitting than sit down and eat balanced, nutritious meals, I’ll sit down and have the fudge. My garden is incredibly important in so many ways. I can’t even find the words, really. The garden is a place where I commune with whoever it is we’re communing with. “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses.” It’s a wonderful old song. I love the colors. I find the older I get, the more weary I am of this gray, colorless world. I think this is why Technicolor movies transported me when I was growing up and why I find, to this day, that an old Technicolor movie from the 40s will send me off into a different world. I am very much aware that I have tried to turn my garden into a Technicolor Fox or MGM musical, with color everywhere and wonderful fragrances and the sound of the water and the birds putting on a show for me, as they fight over the food in one of the feeders, then flit off, to one of the fountains, sometimes to take baths together. I just love to see a group of birds taking a bird bath together. Another activity that comes and goes as it’s supposed to is talking into this tape recorder, and for some reason I always feel when I stop that I’ve been, not at work, because I associate that with having to do something, whether you feel like it or not, but play, pleasurable activity that is also productive in some way.

Another Fragment

If you have to ask the question, you're probably not ready for the answer.

Fragment

It is better to be happy in a commodious prison than to be at liberty in Hell?

Reality Check

Is this world we’re living in real? Not really.

Think About It

What is “thinking”? Do we really think these thoughts? Or do we just listen while they’re spoken to us, then speak them so quickly that we think that they come from us?

Working Title

Working title for my first collection of essays – “Oh, I’m so glad I’m not responsible for any of this.”

Less is More

As long as my body wants exercise, I give it, but I recognize that one of the things that’s happening is that my body is wearing out, and why shouldn’t it? It’s had a long run. I’m just learning to enjoy the fact that my body is falling apart, slowing down, and I can’t swim the laps that I used to. I am not even trying anymore. I am swimming fewer laps and enjoying them more. Less is more, actually, when you come right down to it.

As Time Goes By

Things that at one time brought me great joy and satisfaction now seem devoid of interest, while things I never used to notice are now the most important experiences at this stage of my journey. I’m finding that when I have a really pleasurable experience, it tends to be very intense, kind of all consuming, a moments of what we call ecstasy. Ecstatic experiences are often part of a kind of dream state, and as those things become more intense and more pleasurable, I realize that, for much of our lives, ecstasy is a rare occurrence. I think it’s deliberately planned to be so. As you begin to experience more of these moments, you realize that most of our journey is mundane, tedious, and repetitious. It’s all about cycles, and so you’re forever coming back to the same point and starting over again, whether it’s the seasons or the 24 hours of the day. Those things happen over and over again, and when we have ecstatic experiences, they tend to frighten us. In my 20s, in the 1960s, when we were first started to experiment with pot and LSD and other drugs, these experiences were terrifying for many people and they never did them again. For others, the state of ecstasy was so addictive that they would do anything to stay out of this world and in that special world where everything seemed to go well and to just feel great. For most of out journey, since we’re still in the process of maturing, we haven’t yet developed the spiritual or psychic sense to be able to deal with paradise. The pleasure and the joy are so intense and so unfamiliar during those early stages of our journey that we run from them. I look around me everyday and see people running from peace, contentment, and joy. After all, those things tend to get in the way of all those tasks and commitments that we must complete. In addition, most people really cannot stand leisure. They go on a retreat, and pay a lot of money, and most of the time they’re just nervous wrecks. They don’t know what to do with all of this time where you’re not able to talk, because talk is such a wonderful means of diverting attention from other things that can be very pleasurable. I think this is one of the reasons why so many of us, as we get older, withdraw more and more from the world, because we’re really tired of the conflict and the stress, and because nobody every seems to wants to just stop, take a break, and enjoy what the Gods have put all around us. We spend more and more time in gardens, or libraries, anyplace where the rule is “Quiet, please,” because this is an incredibly noisy world. I’m sure that most older people have the same problem. Noise can drive you insane, especially if you’ve lived a long time, and you grew up in a world that was much quieter. At the time of your life when you need quiet more than ever, just as you did when you were an infant, the world has never been noisier. There have never been more people on the planet, and all of them have tons of toys – pagers, cell phones, computers, and cars -- and they all make noise.

Noise is one of those things that I steals from us an inner peace, because peace within requires a good deal of silence, or at least quiet. I’m in a situation where I have a lot of that, and that really concerns a lot of people: “Oh, John has too much time on his hands. He needs to get a job, and DO something.” Oh, God, I’m so glad I don’t have to work. I HATE work. I don’t mind activity, but the thought of having to go back to somebody else’s schedule, and again to have to deal with noise, and on the job is one of the noisiest places for most of us, is horrifying to me.

So we spend most of our lives in noisy, busy places, frightened by true joy and peace, but as we get older, we begin to reverse and go back to the ways of childhood, which I think of as being wonderfully quiet. There was always music playing at our place, but it was soft and joyful. My parents’ old dance records, which I listened to all through school when I was depressed, would just pick me right back up again.

If you get right back to the beginning, you find great joy in very simple things, and you find that you’ve got lots of time like you did as kid, hours sometimes, in your bedroom or backyard. You have time not only to look but to see, and then to reflect upon, the way in which things began to get tied together with the rest of existence, instead of being isolated incidents, and you begin again to see the great harmony and unity in all things, despite appearances. You remember, again, that this is after all apparently just a play.

I was watching “Bandwagon” the other night, and a wonderful song which was written for that movie, and the last line just blew me away, as many times as I’ve sung it and heard it sung: “The world is a stage/the stage is a world of entertainment.” To know that that gets us off the hook for so much.

So as in childhood, we go back to exploring our own little world, and it’s just fascinating to me how that world changes as we move away from childhood and become more and more connected to the world and all that’s going on there. Now I find, as I go back to the beginning, that I am detaching from the world and going back into my own smaller one, which includes my garden, the swimming pool, the inside of my wonderful home with my player piano and my old records. It’s a very comfortable little cocoon, and that’s my world, and I hear other older people say that, too. “I’m just building a little cocoon,” they say. We’re conscious of the fact that we’re going into that transition between this world and the next, and when we emerge on the other side, it will be so wonderful to be home again, but in the meantime, dear older people, do not let the world steal your joy from what is happening to you. Do not let them tell you that you need to be medicated, or that you need to keep busy and develop new interests. Just tell them to go to hell, and sit there and enjoy yourself, and take the time to look back over your journey and see how glorious it really has been, despite the incredible boredom. See the marvelous organization of it, the fact that without being aware of it we were all going in exactly the right direction at exactly the right speed all the time, and now we can look forward to the fruits of all this. How exciting. So folks, don’t let people take away your old age. You’ve earned it. It’s a wonderful time. And it’s all we have at this point. This is as good as it gets. So, for heaven’s sake, make use of all the good’s that’s there. And if you take the time to walk away from all the distractions of the world, you’ll find that we have been given everything we need at this stage, which happens to be very little. If you’ve got the beauty of nature around you, immerse yourself in that, because it’s very restful and healing, and it gives you strength for the rest of the journey.