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I just got done buzzing off my hair down to the scalp. Why, you ask? I keep it short for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is to avoid helmet-head, but why buzz? Heck, I would've shaved my head if I dared, but that back-of-the-scalp thing is problem enough for buzzing; I didn't want a head full of razor-nicks.
Let me take a step back: The title of this post is not entirely accurate. Of course, we begin to die at about age 16, when our brains are fully formed and our bodies begin to succumb to the power of entropy. Time rips at the ends of our telomeres, piles garbage into our cells, ruins our skin, and our organs begin little by little to fail. Our arteries begin to clog with Big Macs, injuries acquired over the years begin to call notice to themselves, the cartilage in our joints begins to thin and tear, our bones begin to grow brittle, our eyes start growing cataracts. As we begin to take notice of these ravages, we pull back from risky activities, accelerating our demise. This risk-aversion spreads to include other aspects of our lives: We choose security: We select easy partners and secure jobs and tasks that do not test us. We embrace entropy; we gradually slip beneath the waters; we join the Dark Side without even noticing it.
Then, one day, we open our eyes and realize that we are drowning. We realize that we are failing as human beings, and that we are literally, physically, failing, like the winter sun nearing the frozen horizon. We are doomed.
Many of us rage against the dying of the light. We recognize the ways in which we are conspiring with entropy to hasten our end, and begin to eat better, lurch into demanding physical activity, harbor new hobbies that stimulate our minds, destroy the castles of comfort and security that we have mindlessly built around ourselves - edifices that hem us in rather than protect us from anything. Indeed, we recognize how all our comfort- and security-seeking has led us to a place where we are standing at the shore of the River Styx even before the ferryman can even see us. We become shadows.
I guess this is a long and dramatic way of saying that I discovered this morning - thanks to a second mirror that I was using to trim the hair on the back of my head - that I have developed a bald area on the back of my head where I used to have a wild cowlick. Over the past few years, my beard has faded to much grey. A few years ago, I discovered much to my horror that I had become fat; that I did something about, and am in as good of physical condition as ever since adolescence. But am I? The outward signs would suggest no.
So I see the failing of the light now, though the world has been dimming for many years, and that fills me with an urgency to resist. I cannot win this battle, nor can anyone I love, yet we will all fight it at predictable intervals until the light fails completely.
***
In brighter news, more proof of water on Mars!
Best,
Chris
Let me take a step back: The title of this post is not entirely accurate. Of course, we begin to die at about age 16, when our brains are fully formed and our bodies begin to succumb to the power of entropy. Time rips at the ends of our telomeres, piles garbage into our cells, ruins our skin, and our organs begin little by little to fail. Our arteries begin to clog with Big Macs, injuries acquired over the years begin to call notice to themselves, the cartilage in our joints begins to thin and tear, our bones begin to grow brittle, our eyes start growing cataracts. As we begin to take notice of these ravages, we pull back from risky activities, accelerating our demise. This risk-aversion spreads to include other aspects of our lives: We choose security: We select easy partners and secure jobs and tasks that do not test us. We embrace entropy; we gradually slip beneath the waters; we join the Dark Side without even noticing it.
Then, one day, we open our eyes and realize that we are drowning. We realize that we are failing as human beings, and that we are literally, physically, failing, like the winter sun nearing the frozen horizon. We are doomed.
Many of us rage against the dying of the light. We recognize the ways in which we are conspiring with entropy to hasten our end, and begin to eat better, lurch into demanding physical activity, harbor new hobbies that stimulate our minds, destroy the castles of comfort and security that we have mindlessly built around ourselves - edifices that hem us in rather than protect us from anything. Indeed, we recognize how all our comfort- and security-seeking has led us to a place where we are standing at the shore of the River Styx even before the ferryman can even see us. We become shadows.
I guess this is a long and dramatic way of saying that I discovered this morning - thanks to a second mirror that I was using to trim the hair on the back of my head - that I have developed a bald area on the back of my head where I used to have a wild cowlick. Over the past few years, my beard has faded to much grey. A few years ago, I discovered much to my horror that I had become fat; that I did something about, and am in as good of physical condition as ever since adolescence. But am I? The outward signs would suggest no.
So I see the failing of the light now, though the world has been dimming for many years, and that fills me with an urgency to resist. I cannot win this battle, nor can anyone I love, yet we will all fight it at predictable intervals until the light fails completely.
***
In brighter news, more proof of water on Mars!
Best,
Chris
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Seems that only a surgically-induced eating disorder will save me from being a blob. Shudder.
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Sawyer's "Mindscan."
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Read the 2nd (the first sucks):
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/WBY.lamentation.2versions.html
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And there are many many many wonderful things.
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Maybe I shouldn't have shown those poems. I guess what I'm saying is live in the moment. Appreciate what you have where you're at.
If it helps, look at me: a 36-year-old man who hasn't really had a career yet--spending a decade of life to have it all ripped from his tenuous grip. Never even had a partner. I don't give a shit. I just want to be happy in what I do. I've finally turned a corner. I'll probably be in my 40s before I have a life/career I'm happy with. So be it.
Seems to me Gunn is satisfied--he looks it anyway.
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Wrong icon, was it? Text was the same... and yeah.
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Right now, I seem able to embrace life even (or especially) at the edge of the abyss. But it still gets me sometimes, and I know you're right, that it will come in waves. That's what midlife crises are all about.
Neil Gaiman has said one truly brilliant thing, in Sandman. A newly dead child asks Death, Is that all I get? And Death says, "You get what everyone gets, you get a lifetime." This has weirdly comforted me over the last few years.
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That's a beautiful passage. Makes me think of Gandalf's line in LotR movie after Frodo says, "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened."
Gandalf says, "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
I want to make the most of the time I have ahead of me, because I cannot change the time behind.
Chris
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Not much of a philosophy, you say?
- Eddie
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Yeah, I oughta take it for a spin. Also the motorcycle; that helps. Even the scoot does. It feels good to have some fun. For example, right now I'm playing some cards with friends and will head out for dinner and beers and music with more friends soon.
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- Eddie
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Isn't Nature wonderful? Just at the time we get more wrinkles and jowls, our near vision goes bad, so that we can't see them in each other!
Me? I look Ole Mz Nature dead in the eye, and give her the Johnny Cash finger.
...and buzz cuts are sexy. Who can resist stroking the velvety surface?
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