Subject: Re: The Gooses come out the woodwork From: Tiny Human Ferret Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 22:35:38 -0500 Newsgroups: alt.gothic siani evans wrote: > Tiny Human Ferret wrote: > > >> world and has been through all time -- I now understand something my >> rather aged mother said to me not so long ago... something to the effect >> of "when I wake up in the morning if my arthritis isn't acting up, I'm >> always shocked by what I see in the mirror, because in my mind I'm still >> only twenty or maybe thirty or anywhere in between, not that there's > > > > i live in perpetual horror that this will happen to me. it hasn't yet, > and i hope when it does at least i will have done enough in my youth to > not want too badly to claw it all back. but i have a constant sense of > panic that i must do more things before then. Well then. I guess Mom, for all her faults, had a bit of wisdom to pass on. And I suppose I am glad I could relay it. But really, I think this sort of thing happens to us all. And really, it's all just age, the passing of years. Depending on the individual, I suppose, one decides after a certain passage of years, that one simply can't ignore the externalities, especially as they impose themselves upon your internal self-concept. For instance, I am coming to grips with the fact that the features that once lent me the appearance of being far younger than I actually was, are presently making me look more like an exceptionally dissolute 30-something than a youthful near-50-something. It's really a rather ugly combination; I have to get used to it thought apparently nobody else can. But aside from the fact that I damn near cannot breathe due to 30+ years of heavy cigarette smoking, I don't feel much older than I did at 19 or 20. But a few years ago, I once again climbed the mountain on which I had always proved myself and which I call my spiritual home. And it was a cold and blustery day and I had not climbed that face for 15 years and though I knew every handhold, I was alone in my climb and alone on the mountain and if I'd fallen I would have fallen alone and I very nearly did. And I nearly fell, not because I had forgotten how to climb, nor because I had forgotten where were the handholds or how to approach the face: I grew up climbing that face and will forget to walk when I forget how to climb it; rather, on a cold and windy day my strength almost failed me. But many times had I climbed that mountain. And I climbed it again. And on the peak of it, however diminished was my strength, it hadn't yet failed me, or I'd have been half-broken or more, and either clinging or laying somewhere down the face. So, at the peak of this deceptively friendly mountain, a small cry of victory was given; "another successful ascent". But always after the ascent, the descent, and this time, unlike all others before, on the way down, I took the stairs. Not sure what I hope to convey here, but if you think you're running out of time to do things, don't be in a hurry. I could have made the climb successfully, and failed the climb down the face. I'd have gotten down in a hurry for damn sure. But I was in better shape on arrival for having taken the stairs, though it took a bit longer to get there. Maybe you can't claw back the youth that inescapably goes by along with the passing years. But don't be in too much of a hurry, it's a long way down. Take the stairs, and do what you can from the safer descent. Or, if that's what appeals to you, so long as you know what awaits you on landing, fly. --klaatu, see you at the bottom of the stairs, whichever path you choose -- The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. --Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"