Knees and Pluto and Pascal

Scientists react to images from Pluto

I flipped through my emails early this morning, the ritual of deletion and clicks. I read a horrifying beginning of an article about Tinder in this month's Vanity Fair -- was relieved when I couldn't go further as a non-subscriber. I scrolled through a few tweets about last night's Republican "debate" and resolved, again, to not pay attention to anything having to do with those men and women -- did you hear me say ANYTHING? -- until September of 2016. I read somewhere that this is how they do it in France, so barring any demands to re-read Proust, I'm French for a year. Little threads of despair, hovering. My knee hurts, and I bet it's osteoarthritis, and I bet it's because I haven't exercised enough -- well, let's be honest -- my entire life. There's also the age factor and the curious, horrible way things happen when you get older -- not gradually, but all       of          a              sudden. Hairs sprouting from chins, a big toe that crackles, jowls and a front tooth that appears to be hearkening back to pre-orthodontia buck tooth days. Then I saw that photo, and tears streamed down my face (there's no original way to write that) because, really, we're all just hanging out here for a short time and the universe is vast and unknowable. As my compatriot Blaise Pascal said in the 17th century (remember I'm French for a year), vous admirez toujours ce que vous ne comprenez vraiment pas.*













*You always admire what you really don't understand.

Quotes from Favorite Novels

Waiting on Sophie's cannabis
May 17, 2015

What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

1927 

Aging and the Strong of Heart

I spent another quiet day with Aunt Yvonne. Listen, Reader. As they say, aging isn't for the faint of heart. I'm 51, and while there are days when I feel as if I've dragged three times as many decades around, there are more where I'm almost blithely unaware of how short our time on earth is -- at least the young part. In the quiet of the room where my aunt's rest is marked by the puff and wheeze of an oxygen machine, I wonder what it's all about, it the operative word. A parade of friends came to visit -- an Indian woman, a Philippino woman, a blonde in a periwinkle sweater, a beautiful Romanian young woman, a Russian Orthodox priest with Alzheimer's in a long, brown robe, a heavy gold chain with a cross dangling, an 84-year old woman who told me she was taking care of her husband with dementia and battling his children in court.

We know what it's all about.

Just outside my aunt's bedroom is an amazing succulent, its waxy eggplant-colored leaves swollen, clusters and clusters of them sprouting from one gnarled branch and in the middle, a cone of yellow flowers so bright and perfect and multitudinous that they made my eyes fill up with tears.

Dispatch from the Verizon Store

I know I'm late to the game, but Chipotle's disposable drink cups are printed with Cultivating Thought Author Series, and while I read about it somewhere a while back and thought it sounded pretty ridiculous, I have to say that it sure came in handy today after the second hour of standing on my feet at the Verizon store where the Young Verizon Clerks worked at a glacial pace to upgrade the four phones that our family owns. I'm not complaining or anything because how can one complain about owning four smart phones without sounding like a privileged jerk? But really -- how did we get to a world where you can wait for hours at a Verizon store for your smart phones to be updated and also read a bit of Toni Morrison and Malcolm Gladwell's writing on the back of a paper cup? The stories are even illustrated, albeit awkwardly, as you have to turn the cup around to really see the drawing. Some first world problems might even be negative number world problems, they're so lame. Gladwell's story on my cup was a little memoir called Two Minute Barn Raising, and it made me laugh out loud and then sigh, sated by the glory of words and those who wield them so beautifully. I'm almost tempted to type it out right here, but who knows what sort of copyright laws I'd be violating if I did so. I wonder if writers are paid for every paper cup read or are they paid a set fee? Do they write something special just for the cup or do they pull something short out of their archives? I didn't get a chance to read the Toni Morrison because Oliver threw it away before I realized that there was something good to read on the cups, and that made me feel a tiny bit guilty. I might keep the Malcolm Gladwell cup on my desk for a few days, though, to make up for it. I would have liked to see a David Sedaris story on a cup, though, or even an Annie Lamott, and when I exclaimed over how great it was to have something to read while we were waiting, The Brothers looked at one another and rolled their eyes. There's not much I can do or say that doesn't substantiate their belief that I am an insufferable loser -- an old one, at that. I won't let on that I feel superior to them in my preference for great writing on paper cups over shiny smartphones that take foreeeeeeeeever to set up.

Far-Sighted (and this post is all over the place)

So, I swear to you that sometime on Sunday night, while I slept, I became very far-sighted. I've taken a ludicrous pride in not needing reading glasses for anything but menus in the darkest of restaurants or the occasional small print on one of Sophie's prescription bottles or even the incredibly small print on my Healthnet insurance card (I've been reading that one aloud a lot lately). I'm 51 years old, and last time I went to the eye doctor, she marveled at how little prescription I needed for them. I've been near-sighted and worn glasses and contacts for every waking moment since I was about seven years old, but most of my friends have been carrying around those little glasses like you see above for years as I proudly flaunted my physical reading acuity. Yes, I'm using hyperbole here to make a point about aging, about how we cling on to the most ridiculous things as we age -- or should I use the first person here and not include you? Anyway, I realized yesterday and today that I need to have my reading glasses on to comfortably read anything at hand, and I swear to the good lord above that this was not an issue even on Sunday afternoon.

Anyhoo. (By the way, new readers should know that using the word anyhoo is sarcastic on my part. I actually hate the expression but find it incredibly useful when describing incredibly trivial matters, like the 24-hour period in which my eyes changed). I do like the word incredible.

Today I took Sophie to a routine doctor's appointment in Santa Monica and had much time in the car to ponder the meaning of the universe and my tiny, little life. I realized that I have been complaining and kvetching a bit too much -- not just here but probably for the last decade or so. I winced at that and hoped that a bit of self-awareness and a few mea culpas will help to remedy it. I had already traversed the northeastern stretches of the city earlier by driving Henry to school in the Valley, and this time, as I headed west, I listened to an audible version of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Can you believe that I've never read that book? The beginning is on the man-heavy, western, folksy genre side and probably the reason why I've never read it. I'm not a man-heavy, western, folksy genre kind of woman, but just about when I reached the place on the 10W where the blue sky gives way to coastal gloom and the bazillion cars start slowing and contemplating their merge onto the 405N (who are these damn people and where are they all going? I asked Sophie who was happily reaching for and playing with the beads that hang over my head-rest), a prostitute was introduced, and I perked up and stopped pondering to listen. Prostitution is referred to as "sporting," I think, in the book, and that kept me pondering, too. I thought about how damn hard life was -- and continues to be -- for so many people, and how in many ways we are soft as a people -- not soft in the good way, but rather soft in the spoiled, take-it-all-for-granted way. Again, maybe I shouldn't use the third person, here, but should refer to my own far-sighted self. I have a good streak of soft in me, and it's a childish part whose mask is fifty-one years and a pair of reading glasses. I'm not saying that I need to take up the sporting life to understand what hard is (no pun intended), but I reckon (to use the language of McMurtry), I should get a move on from complaining and kvetching (to use the language of the middle-aged woman). If this could happen as quickly as my eyes changed, we'd all be mighty grateful.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery

I was putting my earrings in and just generally "fluffing up," as Oliver put on his basketball shoes in my bedroom yesterday morning. I wore a pair of jeans, a black tee-shirt and a light blue cardigan sweater with one button buttoned and a pair of red clogs. I squinted at myself in the mirror and probably sighed, but Oliver must have been appraising the goods because he said, Mom, you sorta have a style, but it's not like that many other people's. I asked him whether that was good, whether it's a good style or what, exactly do you mean? And then I steeled myself and waited for what I was certain would be a vanity-obliterating comment. He paused, though, and carefully said, Well, it's sort of a style, and maybe it'll be what people will wear eventually, like they'll catch on or something when they're older, but it's sorta good. I asked him what sort of style he thought I had, and he answered, Sort of like yoga - y and hippie-ish and momish all combined. And then he got up and walked out of the room, and I honestly didn't  know whether to feel flattered or resigned.

The Toll

I was going to tell you about the walk I took yesterday up to the outdoor mall and how I arrived sweaty and hot but still made my way to the lingerie department of Nordstrom's where I had the brilliant idea to try on bras with a teeny tiny salesgirl with a measuring tape hanging around her neck and dipping into her perky cleavage. But then I thought that's boring and way too confessional and let's leave that sort of commentary to the experts, like Naomi Wolf whose new book is evidently a biography of the vagina (I read about it this morning in the book review). I wouldn't want to bore anyone about the sight of twenty to thirty bras hanging in a row, ready to be strapped on, the three-way mirror studiously avoided, the eyes of the perky salesgirl demurely cast downward as she checked the fit and I felt the toll.

Cool Store Window and Aging, Part 567

Silverlake, Los Angeles

I was walking down the street with Oliver today, listening to his constant stream of chatter, on the way back from the nearby stationary and gift store where we were looking for valentines. In the same instant that I inwardly noticed how sore my feet felt, even though I was wearing The Clogs, I tripped on some minuscule bit of sidewalk that jutted up, and I went down spectacularly, landing on my hands and knees. I almost NEVER fall, so I'm going to add it to the list of new experiences due to aging. After showing much compassion and helping me up, Oliver demonstrated what I looked like as I fell, and it wasn't pretty, to say the least. What is it about falling that is so damn ridiculous that it brings tears to one's eyes?  Oliver also told me that now you know how much it hurts when I fall, Mom, and I said, No, it probably hurts a whole lot more because I'm big and old, Oliver, and he nodded and agreed to carry my purse home as I hobbled the rest of the way.

On Aging - Part 389

Young lady or old hag?

Around a larger discussion about "pretty girls," with my nine-year old son Oliver, he said to me,

You've seen better days, Mom.

I feigned indifference and asked him why he said that. He replied,

You just look a lot different than those pictures in the dining room. Your face was longer and more -- well -- different.

(I wonder what the Dalai Lama would have to say about that)

Synchronicity, Part 2

Given my recent musings about aging, I wasn't surprised to find this quote on my "Insight from the Dalai Lama" daily calendar today:

The at least causes me a tiny bit of concern, though.

Blurry

Blurry flowers taken on a walk today

I went on a walk today and took the above very blurry photo with my phone. The flowers were, in reality, crisp and yellow and white, sprouting up from some dirt on the top of a wall. They came out blurry, though. Yesterday, I went to the eye doctor because my eyes have felt weird of late. I've been near-sighted since the age of six and have worn either glasses or contact lenses every waking moment of every single day since then. My left eye, in particular, has been irritating me for weeks. I've rubbed and blinked, changed my lenses, peered up into the light with my glasses to see whether it's just a smudge or not. I've wondered if I need reading glasses; I've thought, for a moment, that I might have The Diabetes (that's how my old southern friends say it in a thick accent), because isn't blurry vision a symptom? I didn't go there for too long, though, and finally made an appointment to see the eye doctor. She did all those little tests, made me peer into a machine and look down a long farm road at a little red barn that lay at the end. It looked sort of like this but the road was longer, the perspective more precise:

I love that little picture, I said to her. She laughed, and I wondered how much older than her I was and whether she thought I was weird. Then she put some yellow dye in my eyes and peered at them through that giant black machine.

Look straight ahead, she said, and she shone a blinding light into my eyes.

She even flipped my eyelids or made them go inside-out so that she could see better. That reminded me of a kid who rode the bus with us in Atlanta named Milton Friedman. Milton was what we called coo-coo in those days and he would turn his eyelids inside out and run around making everyone scream. He was poor, lived in a house with white, peeling paint, the dirt yard leading up to it blurry with rusty tools and furniture. My sister and I remembered him when we talked on the telephone the other day, so his name was still fresh in my mind. After mentioning how much I loved the little photo in the eye machine, though, I didn't mention Milton Friedman to the eye doctor, and at some point in her examination of my eyelids, she said Your eyes are a bit dry with the emphasis on the word are. Evidently, I learned, one's eyes become a bit dry if one is peri-menopausal. Even though I wanted to say F%$# you! to the nice, young optometrist, I conceded that this might be happening but that it seems to have literally happened overnight, or at least in the same amount of time that my son Henry has turned from a boy to a teenager which is about four minutes, tops. Time goes so fast these days that it's no wonder everything seems a bit blurry. Sophie is doing so much better that it's a bit of a blur and I've refrained from even writing about or speaking of it because as always I'm superstitious and don't want to jinx the turnaround. So don't say anything direct about that all right? I'm more sharp around the edges when things are going badly; there's a clarity to my days, I get through them with a precise force.

It turns out that along with the dry eyed, pre-menopausal business, my prescription has changed subtly so I'm getting new glasses and new contact lenses. Things should be clearer then. Right now, I'm blinking a bit, trying to find a balance, taking stock in the blur.