TIME TAKES ITS POUND OF FLESH

I ran into a former colleague at HEB. She was sitting in a motorized cart as she weaved her way down the aisles. She retained her winning smile, but she looked at me, probably noticing that I had also aged, and said, "These aren't the golden years. These are the olden years."

When you are in your eighth decade, you are in the process of a slow death. I've lost many friends and acquaintances to heart attacks and cancer over the last year. My world is inhabited by ghosts. I remember more dead people that I do live people.

Physically, I'm imploding. I don't know if I'm crumbling, collapsing or disintegrating. Or if I am a victim of all three. My mind seems intent on remaining with me, until death does us part as I've repeated in three marriages, but in the latter cases these have proven to be empty words. Death, however, communicates to us in dire and direct terms and never vacillates: There is nothing permanent except death. 

In my front room a tennis racquet stands in one corner and a guitar in another. Because I have been reduced athletically and musically, they are little more than ornaments. Before COVID, I was playing tennis and the guitar regularly, but I'm handicapped to the point by the advancing years that I can't hit the ball for more than 15 minutes without sitting down I'm so out of breath. I haven't lost a step as we say about our inevitable decline. I've lost several steps. 

In fact, I woke up this morning and my right foot was uncomfortably swollen. I feel like I'm being poked by pins. I don't know the reason and, like many of my aches and pains, I stoically wait for them to mysteriously disappear just as they mysteriously appeared. To my chagrin, another ailment or malady will replace them. We're constantly ambushed in this existence.

Prior to the epidemic, I was a regular at El Hueso de Fraile every Thursday night. I strummed my cords and belted out the blues. Between the poet Langston Hughes' verses and my own twelve-bar renditions I kept the small audiences entertained. I wasn't packing the place, but I was having fun. The Foncerrada family appreciates artists and they weren't disturbed by my lyrics that have gotten me fired from other joints whose owners and patrons didn't share my vision.

Besides chronic sciatica and asthma, I now have arthritis in my hands. It's painful performing the simplest of chords. I miss singing. I miss improvising. I miss being a downtown minstrel. But like being dead, I'm powerless in my effort to combat the reality that my body is breaking down. And then there are all the worries and sad memories. 

Fortunately, I can still exercise, which is a must with sciatica. I have fashioned my own regimen, which I call Yankee Yoga. It's a combination of yoga and old-fashioned calisthenics that we learned when we were kids in junior high. I combine these with push-ups and sit-ups as well as curl a pair of 30-pound dumbbells and as a result I've maintained a presentable form. There are, believe it or not, some 70-year-old gals who are surprisingly frisky, but they don't want to waste their time with a walking cadaver, so I do my best to stay in shape in order to put my talents on display in the senior league.

I'm not smoking dope with the lung problems and I've cut back dramatically on my drinking although there are spontaneous moments that are worth the price the next day, particularly as a retired person who can lie in bed until the debt has been paid. I don't associate with anyone socially except my oldest son, which is never more than once a week at best since he is busy with his life.

I like my humble abode and I adhere to a regular schedule. I'm the old dog who is incapable of learning new tricks. I find traveling, even the most exotic of sojourns, an inconvenience. I tire too easily and I prefer conserving my energy. 

I'm not to be pitied though. I accept the circle of life. I am doing some of my best and most challenging writing. I'm reading non-stop. If I could retain any of the knowledge I'm accessing, I might be able to call myself an intellectual. Optimistically, I trust that these insights I gather are submerged  in my subconscious and come to the surface in my prose and poems.  

I fixed myself bacon and eggs for breakfast. In 30 minutes the Cowboys kick off and I will listen to the game on the radio while I do my Yankee Yoga. Later in the afternoon I will entertain a visitor. I have been typing all morning and I will spend the evening with my books. I purposely don't have a television because it would encroach on my literary pursuits. I am both lazy and easily tempted. If there were no such thing as sin, I could call myself a saint, but the flesh is weak.

And thus ends my Sunday sermon. I will edit it later in the day. It's good to let a story breathe like a bottle of wine. After not looking at your piece for several hours, you are able to review it from a more sobering perspective. 

In short, I no longer go to mass, my apartment is my church and I worship the moment.