had it as a 45. still stuck in my head. check out the B-side!

check out the B side!

He was drowning and someone pulled his head out of the water. Beautiful.

Last Call
Old age and the end of nature
Edward Hoagland

This is the most beautiful and poignant essay on aging I’ve ever read. I’m not quite at his particular juncture of life, but I’m watching my parents get older in a similar manner, and his brave, thoughtful words ring so true. We young people (55 and below) run about cussing, fighting and carrying on, and those with the most wisdom, the deepest understanding of what really matters most, often are relegated to the sidelines. It begins: “Grandparents – double-domed or double-chinned, and approval dispensers, greenback machines, emeritus jungle gyms – may be fragile in health but must avoid smelliness as a consequence, or cranky outbursts, pompous pronouncements.” Dive right in!

Creating the link, I found out that you need to be a Harper’s subscriber to read it. Sorry about that. Or subscribe, if you’re looking for some fun readables!

Despite, or maybe in addition to, all this, now we read that  “Scientists performed surgery on the hoods of cobras to determine how ribs turned into hood bones and rib muscles turned into hood muscles. A number of the snakes awoke from anesthesia during the surgery, which the scientists found ‘disconcerting’.”

That is disconcerting, but I’m thinking even more so for the snakes. How would you like to wake up during surgery? Surgery, by the way, performed by a species much advanced beyond your snake-ness. (Or so we think.) I’m thinking all those folks who’ve been nabbed by aliens and abducted to spaceships, then poked and prodded over the years might have some opinion here.

“The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has changed the word ‘booty’ to ‘spoils’ in a new translation of the Bible. ‘Booty,’ to younger generations, connotes a portion of the body often shaken in time to music, rather than the spoils of war. ‘We needed a new translation because English is a living language,’ said Bishop Richard Skilba.
From The Week Magazine

Amy has had cancer for 7 years. She lost a breast, but honestly she doesn’t think about it much. She’s back healthy, cancer-free, and everyone tells her she’s probably out of the woods. She never gave up the hat though. The one she wore when she didn’t have any hair. It looks good now capping thick gray locks – the hair makes her look both younger, because it’s so thick and, older because of the gray.

Brian works at the coffee shop that Amy has been going to for over a year and a half. Every morning, Amy comes in and orders light roast and sits down to read. This blows Brian’s mind. There’s this sense of grace that Amy commands that always reminds him of a priest in a sunlit church all alone. Brian never feels that. Except when he’s around Amy. It’s almost like his perception of her becomes his feelings inside, which sounds stupid.

Amy’s back at work. Everyone’s cool and all that but she thinks everyone knows just how close she is to the edge; how slippery the ridge, how foreboding the relapse. It’s right around the fucking corner. Of course there are survivors, but she’s been back with the chemo twice. The doctors and nurses cheer; and Amy can tell that they care with every fiber of their being. They’ve seen it so much and they’re fucking sick of seeing it. Victories for them are victories over whatever devil biology musters.

Brian is also sick and tired. Sick and tired of this job – not that he doesn’t love it in the sense that it’s comfortable and the customers love his patter and his coffee. The regulars light up his life. Most of them. They are his friends – certainly beyond whatever friends he has from high school and all that. But he’s sick and tired of not having a girl like Amy in his life. He deserves it as much as the next guy and she’s there and they’ve talked enough for him to know all about her cancer and he thinks she thinks he’s freaked out by it, but any attempt at convincing someone you’re not freaked out by something, sounds totally freaked out. So he doesn’t say anything.

Amy likes Brian. He’s one of the few constants in her life that just feels good. He’s funny and likes to drop in the “Cappuccino you later”s and rather than being annoyed, Amy feels right. She feels like he’s someone who understands that the constant, grim determination to be new, hip, novel and relevant, crushes the soul. Repetition is good. That’s why we have ritual.

Brian hands Amy her coffee. The sun beams through the Dunn Brother’s window. The room buzzes. She laughs for no real reason other than it’s all good, at least right now.

“Another day, another light roast,” Brian says.

“Thank you, sir,” she intones in a familiar military manner and Brian laughs.

She turns for her table.

“Amy,” he says, “wanna get a cup of coffee sometime? Uh, anywhere other than this sad joint?”

“The world’s snake population and the empathy of college students were found to have dropped precipitously in the past decade.”

This from Harper’s “Findings” September 2010 issue, and this frightens me rather a lot. I don’t mind snakes, as long as they mind their own business and stay out of mine. But I also assume they really don’t want me up in their business either.* So let’s not let the snake population drop, despite our mutual animosity. Lord knows they eat something we don’t want around here; and we do the same for them.

But then there’s this other issue: empathy and college students. College students, for the love of god. That’s when your empathy should be at its most heightened state, blazing fucking empathy! Because you’re filled with passion, but lacking the knowledge that comes from experience, and so know mostly feelings, and your feelings better damn well be working toward the positive, caring, empathetic. People cared for you, young one, or you’d be dead. Now care for them, and feel their suffering.

Be filled with the love of the world, because if it’s dead in you now, barring some revelatory experience, which could be beautiful, but also often just plain creepy; it could be dead in you forever.

I’m thinking we need a new leading economic indicator: The Empathy Index – tracks how much society (or someone) cares about others in relation to how angry they are about their tax burden.

* Imagine being a snake and some San Diego zoologist is displaying you up there under the bright lights of Johnny Carson’s television stage (date: luke/old). Brutal, that, and not at all snake-like.