12 Comments
Oct 9Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

What an insightful assortment! Feeling the first one ("eyesight becomes fuzzier" etc.) big time...

Expand full comment
author

As they say, getting older ain't a fun time... but it beats the alternative ;-)

Expand full comment
Oct 9Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

All good musings this week, but #4's a banger.

Expand full comment
Oct 9Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

Ouf, that last one hit hard. They all did, actually; but that one in particular today. What to do with all that betrayal, when there's no "standards committee" for human behaviour?

Expand full comment
author

Yep... it's a tough one!

Expand full comment
founding
Oct 9Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

You're in a poetic mood today...

I feel like the more physically inept I become, with hands and elbows hurting, books being read twice as far away as normal and nights being split up into how many times I have to wee, the more all that aging actually grounds me to reality and to the now. The more I become physically grounded, the less control I have of when and where my imagination takes me. "Only in their dreams can men be truly free. Twas always thus and always thus will be" John Keating

I genuinely can't imagine what the innocents would truly be like.

I like to think of it as "it's not where you're going to, it's who you're going through"

Expand full comment
author

Actually, you're right about the way aging bodies do forcibly remind you of the physicality of life...

Expand full comment
Oct 9Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

That first bit…. Conjured a “trailer” in my head (as all good evocative writing, such as yours, tends to do): the world as a vessel, or even a whale, swimming through space and humans clinging on like barnacles. Clearly saw on ageing man hanging on by his fingernails, determined not to let go and fall away and behind into the dark spaces between worlds.

Expand full comment
author

Whoa. That's a strong image. I like that.

Expand full comment
Oct 13Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

I'm in the fortunate position of entering my mid-forties relatively untouched by time. My hair, though increasingly grey, stubbornly grows; my eyesight is good and, according to the optician, unlikely now to deteriorate for decades; my teeth are solid; my parents are alive and currently on a tour of South America.

So what obsesses me is not what I have lost, but what I am about to lose. Especially my parents.

Expand full comment
author

Yep, I hear you. Treasure them now, as you clearly do. That's all you can really do.

Expand full comment

Yes. As you get older, you hear all kinds of clocks ticking

Expand full comment