PAIN, WEAK HANDS, CURSING

Pardon my French, but old age is a bitch.

These are NOT the "Golden Years." Where the hell is the gold?

I'm 74 freakin' years old, and this is, as one doctor put it, "The Age of Pain."

It is also a time of weak hands and swearing. The words I most hear out of my mouth are curse words. "Damn it to hell." "F**k." "Sh*t."

I drop things, I trip over things, I stub my toe, I screw things up.

I don't intend to do any of these things, they just happen.

And that is part of the problem. I feel young inside, sometimes 18, or 35, or 50. I sure as hell don't feel 74, whatever that feels like. I don't want to know.

Nobody wants to get old, including me. Especially me, young at heart as I am. Hell, I'm still flirting with women, even though they are not as young as they used to be.

Of course, that does NOT apply to me.

I still want to go mountain biking and body surfing and scuba diving. I don't, but it sounds like fun. I still want to race my road bike against my bicycle buddies.

Your hands get weak, but they don't FEEL weak. Jars are a lot harder to open. You can't fix things like you used to.

This morning, I tried to take the top off a spray can of olive oil. My hands were slightly oily, so I couldn't get it.

I got out a kitchen tool used to remove lids. I squeezed the hell out of the plastic top, crushing it, and twisted the hell out of the little bastard, and sure enough, it finally popped off.

So did the little squirt top inside, which skittered across the floor. "F**k!"

Why are these simple everyday things so hard to do?

No reason, they just are. I think it's nature's way of telling you something.

It's a message I don't want to hear.

-- Roger

LORCA AND I

Federico Garcia Lorca is my favorite poet, although I love others: Neruda, Rilke, even Borges, whom I think of mostly as a fiction writer.

Lorca has a poem that goes:

FAREWELL

If I die,
leave the balcony open.

The little boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I can see him.)

The reaper is harvesting the wheat.
(From my balcony I can hear him.)

If I die,
leave the balcony open!

I am at a certain point in my life, where I think of this poem. I was just sitting outside, on the deck, like a balcony, drinking beer and reading Borges in the sun.

I've been an outdoor guy all my life, and I still love the outdoors, even if it is just sitting outside.

I am very fortunate to have passed this love onto my son and grandchildren, who all love nature, too.

I am fortunate, indeed.

If I die, leave the balcony open!

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle