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October 2002 If I were British I would be eccentric. Since I’m American, I’m weird. I think to be eccentric you have to have money. Actually we’re all weird. The trick is to not let it show. When you’re retired you can be eccentric, because you no longer have a function. Being retired is like having money, only without the money. Somehow I always thought that strange was cool. Must be the attraction of novelty. Ordinary life: it’s been done. There are certain problems that arise if you’re … different. But that’s the road you have to go down. It’s not like you have a choice. Professionals, managers and technical and administrative
workers now make up 43% of the unemployed, according to the government.
– “Will
Manage for Food”, TIME.com Good. Maybe this will help them to see how the rest of us live. If you’re “older,” check out SeniorSex.org. There is no other god but imagination. I'm beginning to think that if the Democratic party were on fire, it wouldn't be worth the trouble it would take to piss on them. – Tom Tomorrow’s weblog I think it’s worth the trouble, even when they’re not on fire.
The bright side of politics is that it sometimes gives us the chance to be who we want to be. I think of it as “witnessing.” As in the Christian tradition. When I hand someone a leaflet I’m telling them of my faith that things could be better. In 2000, 25 percent of U.S. workers earned less than poverty-level wages. – Arianna Huffington, Salon Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), one of the inventors of modern dance, said, “A lot of things that are good for other people are bad for me.” Likewise. I’ve been getting this shit from people all my life: just do what they do and I’ll be fine. (“Just do what I do,” my high school friend Tony said, as he took me to my first Catholic service. “Kneel when I kneel, laugh when I laugh.”) It won’t work. I’m not built that way. … you can pursue a dream only to have the unpleasant surprise of discovering that it is coming after you. Chaos has its own charms. It grows, it advances, it seeks out weakness, it lives for revenge. Fatalism helps with the jump, but not the fall. – Craig Nova, Wetware Something new, literary science fiction. Very interior. The characters spend a lot of time mulling over their depressing thoughts about the world around them in 2026-29. Not a lot happens. Well written but tedious. A lot of what people consider faults are just individual differences. Which we seem to have a hard time accepting. We all want it our way. Many of the people, especially the workers as they trudge
home from the mills in the dying light, have the look of those who’ve
long ago gotten used to the fact that no one remembers them. – Dennis
Lehane, A Drink Before the War It’s enough to observe that we’ve stood history on its head by creating a society in which only dinosaurs can thrive, leaving little warm-blooded mammals – like people – the losers. – Nobody, street roots I’ve reached the age where I’m mostly memory. The Secretary: sassy, erotic. A sadomasochistic romantic comedy. Amount it costs to have a heart attack, according to researchers: $28,663. – The Oregonian The prognosis for survival after 60 is age 78 for men and for women almost 80. – Northwest Senior Life In the late 70s I listened to a few women talking. Some of the younger ones said they wished they could find a man to support them. An older woman responded, “Just don’t get the head that goes with it.” Spirited Away: a well done Japanese kids movie. Watching Bullit on TV, 1968, Steve McQueen. I remember this movie as being exciting and McQueen as being very watchable. Now they both seem boring. Frank Bullit is a cipher. At one point his girlfriend figures that out and asks, “Who are you?” A brief moment of character nondevelopment before the shooting and car chases resume. Optimists are dangerous: they don’t see risks. In Wild Mind Natalie Goldberg says that both writing and falling in love are a loss of control. Falling asleep is the same problem. Letting go. Visualization helps. Replaces thought. There are some advantages to being old: a lot of the stuff I hear people talking about – politics, religion – I figured out 40 years ago. Of course, I worked at it. What I didn’t figure out was making a living. I don’t believe there ever was a solution. Comparing my sisters’ stories of our past with my own memories, I wonder about memory. I think the past is something we invent to explain the present. Reading is feeding. I read that most of our foreign aid goes to Egypt and Israel. Location, location, location. |