Where Do They Live?

Most of the time I don't think of checking Sitemeter. Today I took a look at the stats and asked for a breakdown of points of origin for visitors. What a surprise! Jordan; Denmark; Ireland...France wasn't a surprise because my granddaughter has been there since January, but repeated visits from someone in a city in Connecticut where I don't believe I know anyone? In fact, except for half a dozen places not marked "unknown," I was amazed to discover that someone there has visited more than once. Of course, I'd love to know where the unknowns are too.

I'm not sure if this means anything other than that some people must spend hours "surfing" the Net. Witness the You Tube videos that arrive in your e-mail that make you wonder how anyone found them in the hundreds produced every week. Still--I'd love to have some of these readers let me meet them through a comment (pro or con).

In our years when my late husband was an international sales manager for a company that made a unique product, we met many people from many places, and made friends of a dozen or more. Those days are long gone, so I can't help wondering who's venturing into western North Carolina to read something here...and more than that, why.

Benefit

In the subtitle of this blog I didn't confess that aging would turn out to be one of my regular topics, but it has. Just thought I'd mention a benefit I never anticipated, and in fact have been assuming was an occasional spate of creativity:  too much to say. After decades of looking for what to say, of trying to decide if there was anything I (as opposed to ten other people) could say, for the past year or so, I find I have more to say than there's time to say it.

I realize, of course, that that doesn't mean anyone will want to read it. I just thought I'd mention it as a kind of unexpected (and rare) benefit of being on the downhill side. Wait a while; maybe you'll be so lucky!

An Examined Life--a Good Thing?

AN EXAMINED LIFE?

Can you remember the first time you noticed that you could recall an event that happened ten years ago? That was the first jolt of reality that really shook me. When you're old enough to remember clearly things that happened that long ago, you suspect you're no longer young—or at least not as young as once you were. Of course, when you have a clear recollection of things you did and people you knew fifty years ago, you know you're getting old, even if nothing else has made that knowledge inescapable.

So what other signs are there of our reclassification in the actuarial tables? One that seems almost too common  to be mentioned is the realization that you can't climb stairs or run or jump from stepping stone to stepping stone across a stream with your old agility, not to mention play a pickup game of basketball, or enjoy sandlot baseball or kayaking any more. What about the day you get through weeding the flowerbed and have to think carefully, arrange your legs and hands judiciously, and clamber to your feet with the hope that no one is observing your imitation of a giraffe?

            Travel tires you, driving at night becomes more of a challenge than you're willing to face, you long for not only your fireside in the metaphorical sense, but also the literal—not to mention bed at an earlier hour (or perhaps much later) than was your wont.

            Do your memories make you wish to live the best times over again, or grateful that you'll never have to? How much would you do over if you had a chance?  How many miserable moments would you choose never to have known, even given what they may have taught you? Do you long to relive the happiest times? Can you answer those questions without a pause?

            Maybe it helps adjusting to where old people find ourselves if we can say we wouldn’t want to go back. In spite of having lived a life too happy for me to deserve, it isn’t something I’d want to live again.

Having said that, I wonder if I can say why…perhaps because I don’t remember the person I was at those times as anyone I would want to meet now. If I haven’t learned anything else, I’ve found out that if we can feel we’ve become wiser, more compassionate, steadier, and more humorous with age, there are few of us who wouldn’t be ashamed to be the self-absorbed, over-confident, basically ignorant youths we had to grow up from. Even if we could choose to relive a day in our lives like Emily in Our Town, many of us wouldn’t do it. Maybe it made sense for her because she died so young.

            What we do need to figure out is how to resurrect the joys as well as the anguish of our callow selves by recalling them in our present state of decline. My list of those is long, and I’m surprised at how some of the worst things seem to have lost sharp focus. I’m glad for that. There’s no need to try to sharpen what is now blurred; I can concentrate on looking at the photos that capture the times when I was so happy. I even knew it then, and just give thanks now.

            The hardest part, I think, is recognizing the necessity of looking forward enough so as not to fall into the trap of trying to live the rest of our time so focused on the past that we throttle all possibilities of, at the least, enjoyment in the here and now. Writing this post is one of those anchors for the present.

Surprise!

I have just finished Joan's book, 'Peripheral Vision' and loved it.  Found it to be tightly written, artfully composed, thought provoking, and delightful.  Particularly liked the unexpected endings in her stories.  In fact, have ordered a couple of copies myself.  

Nothing like an unexpected endorsement! The sender is an old friend, brother of the reader quoted above. I wasn't aware either of them had read the book!

Hail Technology!

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

 I imagine Jane Austen sitting at her tiny table, writing on small sheets of paper with a quill pen, glancing occasionally at the front lawn through the window she faced, any poetic inclinations splinter like thin glass--in the face of technological reality. For the thousandth time I ask, "How did she do it?" Of course, the question applies to the myriad authors whose work has survived centuries and millennia, but somehow Jane is close enough to have become the emblem of all that labor. Besides, I visited her house once and saw that table in that room in that genteel brick house.  

For me it hasn't been merely the facility of editing and speed of comunication, the Net has provided relationships I could never otherwise have found. Support (emotional and intellectual) has dropped repeatedly into my proverbial lap as a result of some electronic connection. Not only have I found people I honestly consider to be friends, they have been uniformly generous with advice and information and encouragement.

Finding myself becoming a part of a community I never envisioned, it's amazing how the presence of those who preceded me helps to dispel the "outsider" discomfort. A little nudge from one of these new friends makes it possible to try to do this self-promotion. So herewith a note to anyone interested:

The Lowestoft Chronicle published a second poem. The first from 2011 is included in their print anthology and a list of "the best of the net."

If it weren't for that Net, I'd be sitting as lonely as Jane, though in a different sort of place and with nothing in print OR on line!