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Good Things/Bad Things About Being Old
Oct. 1st, 2019 11:00 amThere are some things I like about being old. For example: I don’t much give a fuck what anybody thinks about me anymore. I wasted so much youth feeling sensitive, watering imaginary gardens of slights with resentful tears.
Now, I’m hip and laissez faire!
Don’t like me? Great! Go fuck yourself.
###
But there are some things about being old I don’t like at all. For example: You have no physical resilience. I’ve been sick for a week now. I never used to get sick for a week. I’m getting better bit by bit, but on the whole, I still feel… off.
Used to be recovery was an overnight thing. You’d go to bed feeling like shit, and you’d wake up the next morning feeling wonderful.
Now, recovery is this baby-steps process.
Also, it’s been a week since I’ve done any kind of exercise, and I get nervous that I’m losing muscle mass, or muscle memory, or whatever it is that divides people who are physically active from people who sit around all day and complain.
I’m gonna go out today even though the little arrow on the well-o-meter is still tilting into the pink zone. Gotta get my muscles used to moving. Otherwise I will dissolve into a puddle of protoplasm.
###
Else?
Watched the Tom Hardy version of Wuthering Heights last night. Hardy is an unlikely Heathcliff but he turns out to be very good in the role, a very Byronic embodiment, particularly in his scenes on the moors with the hapless Isabella. Apparently during part of that three years he spent away from Gimmerton Valley, knifing men in alleyways and cheating drunks out of their inheritances, Heathcliff took a First in English Circumlocution at Oxford.
The Brontes grew up in a very peculiar house that was completely surrounded by a graveyard:
I personally think this must be one of the reasons why they all suffered from such spectacularly bad health. The coffin lead and assorted rotting corpse microbes would have leached into the groundwater and hence into their well.
I was reminded of this last year when I went to Nate’s wedding and found that his and Kristen’s cute little house was smack in the middle of a cemetery!
“So adorable,” I said. “You are on the municipal water system, right?”
“No!” Nate said expansively. “We have our own well!”
Uh oh, I thought. Don’t go adopting any gypsy foundlings from New Haven! But said nothing.
Now, I’m hip and laissez faire!
Don’t like me? Great! Go fuck yourself.
###
But there are some things about being old I don’t like at all. For example: You have no physical resilience. I’ve been sick for a week now. I never used to get sick for a week. I’m getting better bit by bit, but on the whole, I still feel… off.
Used to be recovery was an overnight thing. You’d go to bed feeling like shit, and you’d wake up the next morning feeling wonderful.
Now, recovery is this baby-steps process.
Also, it’s been a week since I’ve done any kind of exercise, and I get nervous that I’m losing muscle mass, or muscle memory, or whatever it is that divides people who are physically active from people who sit around all day and complain.
I’m gonna go out today even though the little arrow on the well-o-meter is still tilting into the pink zone. Gotta get my muscles used to moving. Otherwise I will dissolve into a puddle of protoplasm.
###
Else?
Watched the Tom Hardy version of Wuthering Heights last night. Hardy is an unlikely Heathcliff but he turns out to be very good in the role, a very Byronic embodiment, particularly in his scenes on the moors with the hapless Isabella. Apparently during part of that three years he spent away from Gimmerton Valley, knifing men in alleyways and cheating drunks out of their inheritances, Heathcliff took a First in English Circumlocution at Oxford.
The Brontes grew up in a very peculiar house that was completely surrounded by a graveyard:
I personally think this must be one of the reasons why they all suffered from such spectacularly bad health. The coffin lead and assorted rotting corpse microbes would have leached into the groundwater and hence into their well.
I was reminded of this last year when I went to Nate’s wedding and found that his and Kristen’s cute little house was smack in the middle of a cemetery!
“So adorable,” I said. “You are on the municipal water system, right?”
“No!” Nate said expansively. “We have our own well!”
Uh oh, I thought. Don’t go adopting any gypsy foundlings from New Haven! But said nothing.
