“I write for myself, to save what’s left of myself.”
Charles Bukowski, poet
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Today I spent the morning on the porch, under the fan, reading poetry and hoping the humidity evaporates. Not much luck. But the poetry is good even though Bukowski and many others are dead. Good poetry lives on. It’s immortal.
Bukowski was prolific, wrote thousands of poems. He lived to write, and wrote to live. He also lived to drink, bet the horses and before he got too old, to fight. The above quote is his stock response to anyone who asked why he kept writing poetry. He couldn’t stop.
It gets me to thinking about the ‘stopping’ part of life. Where do we jump off life, leave what gave us purpose for so many years, and enjoy the sunset Cormac McCarthy lamented in his book, “No Country for Old Men?” Will the blood ever run cold where passion once flowed?
I’m not the first to think about acting our age. Frost the poet had some lines about a ‘seeker’ that I recalled:
“His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.
It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.”
No matter what the pursuit might have been—golf handicap, miles jogged, deals done—there was life.
But there is a point in time when age tends to dictate actions. Face it, octogenarians cannot keep pace with generations half our age. Still, we try, aching joints and all, and looking silly in the process, old souls in a changed world. The adage, “Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and vigor” is only a half-truth.
Optics won’t win the day. We’re technologically deficient even though we hold computers in our hands and wear them on our wrists The days of heavy lifting are over, and our best fallback is wisdom. But it’ll never take the place of ‘the pursuit.’
What child never heard a mother say, “Child, act your age.” And the same question continues for men at all stages of life. What husband has not heard multiple times the voice of his mother rolling off the lips of his own wife, “Grow up, act your age, quit acting the fool.” Women, for the most part, must come into this world equipped with an innate, inbred sense of decorum.
Children even have a valid Scriptural excuse found in Soloman’s Wisdom Book of Proverbs (22:15): “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.” Men have neither excuses nor clues of how to act their age. So, what to do? They make their own rules. Anything goes.
I’m frequently asked, “Are you retired or still working?” I mostly answer tongue-in-cheek,
“Well, I guess I’m still working. I have an office, a fax, a computer and a cell phone. I’m prepared.” I’m battling tooth and nail against an archenemy, the cancel culture, that’s attempting to make me irrelevant, if not totally invisible.
But I spend a lot of time talking with old friends about ‘the old days’ without much to show for it. Is this ‘working?’
Today a still, small voice that sounds like my mother keeps whispering inside of my head, “Act your age.” How can one argue with the voice of their mother? Still, I wonder, how should I act at this age? I’ve never been this age before.
Is it time to throw in the towel, humbly accept defeat to the new generation of movers and shakers only to find the nearest shuffleboard court or golf course? Never.
There are better choices. We’ll be out to green pastures soon enough with tiny colorful plastic flowers growing above us. Let’s give the younger crowd some pushback while we still can.
Here’s what the Irish poet Dylan Thomas suggests:
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
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Next time you hear your mother’s voice whispering to you, “Act your age,” quote her Bukowski:
“The critics are always going to be there,
And when they stop then you will know
That your own brief day in the sun is over.”
Until then, rage on.
Bud Hearn
August 21, 2023