old enough – no more
annoyance boredom pursuit
of a longer life

Somewhere in the canon of Jim Harrison, the one time sage of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wrote something along the lines of go ahead and eat the fat and take a walk afterward.

This is the same guy who advised taking a long walk before a meal to build up an a proper appetite.

How long is a long life?

Dr. Henry (Indiana) Jones said that it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

To write this out, I have to admit that I clicked on the article titled, “Fab abs, Nicole Kidman. But this frantic effort to look half your age is frankly demeaning” by Yvonne Roberts in the Guardian.

Ms. Roberts takes the point of the view that we should act and look and embrace our age.

As this is an opinion I espouse, I enjoyed the article very much.

Back in high school in a class called ‘Advanced Photo and Filmmaking’ (We practised black and white darkroom technique and used Kodak Super 8mm cameras – you know, cutting edge technology) we watched a documentary (16mm movie) on the life of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Unlike Ansel Adams who felt exposing an image was just the start to what would happen in the darkroom, Mr. Cartier-Bresson felt that once you clicked that shutter, the decisive moment, your work was done. The rest was up to technicians.

In the film, Mr. Cartier-Bresson told the story of photographing a very old Grand-Dame of society for Vogue, who asked him to, please, not make her look old in his pictures.

The film then cycled slowly through several black and white images of a beautiful, dignified, evidently charming tho still, very old woman.

The narration had gone silent and then on the last image, the lady, white haired with stunning eyes and a beautiful smile entirely wreathed with wrinkles, Mr. Cartier-Bresson said something along the lines of ‘I think … when you get old, you get the face you deserve.’

That line has stayed with me and has pretty much summed up my thought on growing old and my role in it.

I gave Ms. Robert’s article a fast read but I really liked that last paragraph.

Relentless introspection (as opposed to the insurrection required to challenge life’s inequalities) and an obsession with what has been lost, instead of contemplating the gains that come with age, stops us feeling at ease with the process of becoming ourselves, however flawed and creased. In Natural Causes: Life, Death and the Illusion of Control, the author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich refreshingly writes: “Once I realised I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.”

I will go to the beach and I will sit in the sun and read.

If I feel like I may bring along a cigar.

I may or may not go for a walk.

I may or may not go for a swim (with the sharks.)

I will contemplate the gains that come with age.

I will be at at ease with the process of becoming myself, however flawed and creased.

I am old enough to die.

I am also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.

what strikes you from space
is Earth is like no other
planet we have seen

Adapted from the line, “What strikes you from space is that Earth is like no other planet we’ve seen. Even from hundreds of thousands of miles away you just know: there is a planet teeming with life. Against that vast black backdrop, it’s so beautiful and fragile.”

From the article, “‘Look closely and there’s a tear in Armstrong’s eye’: the Apollo space missions as you’ve never seen them before“.

enjoy illusion
control over digital
life not unobserved

Feel bad about life during the on going covid news cycle?

Want to feel worse?

Read We’re About to Find Out What Happens When Privacy Is All but Gone by Alex Kingsbury, a member of the NYT’s editorial board.

If you don’t have access to the NYT (Hint Hint, when your free 3 day account from your local library expires, go back to the local library digital page and click where some nice webmaster has written ‘Go here to get another free 3 day account.’

If your local library digital page wasn’t written by a nice webmaster (there are some of us) then I apologize and here is the gist of what Mr. Kingsbury said.

Whenever I see one of those billboards that read: “Privacy. That’s iPhone,” I’m overcome by the urge to cast my own iPhone into a river. Of lava.

That’s not because the iPhone is any better or worse than other smartphones when it comes to digital privacy. (I’d take an iPhone over an Android phone in a second; I enjoy the illusion of control over my digital life as much as the next person.)

What’s infuriating is the idea that carrying around the most sophisticated tracking and monitoring device ever forged by the hand of man is consistent with any understanding of privacy. It’s not. At least not with any conception of privacy our species had pre-iPhone.

Protecting digital privacy is not in the interest of the government, and voters don’t seem to care much about privacy at all. Nor is it in the interest of tech companies, which sell user private data for a profit to advertisers. There are too many cameras, cell towers and inscrutable artificial intelligence engines in operation to live an unobserved life.

For years, privacy advocates, who foresaw the contours of the surveilled world we now live in, warned that privacy was a necessary prerequisite for democracy, human rights and a flourishing of the human spirit. We’re about to find out what happens when that privacy has all but vanished.

I think back when George Orwell wrote 1984, he only put cameras that could monitor citizens in a few strategic locations instead of having every citizen carry a monitoring device because he was striving for a level of disbelief that could be believed.

Had you painted the world of today for Mr. Orwell back in 1949 he would have said that no world could be that crazy.

Got to run, my iPhone is ringing.