Wednesday, December 28, 2022

MY YEAR AGING UNGRACEFULLY

 



2022 has been an uncomfortable year for me.   I am a year older moving toward my mid-eighties and beginning to feel my mortality.  I have had a couple of heart flair-ups and ended up in intensive care for two days.   I look in the mirror and barely recognize the old man looking back at me.

 

It brings to mind the book Fool, by one of my favorite authors Christopher Moore.   It is the story of King Lear as told by his Court Jester.

 

“Goneril went to her father and took his hand, ‘Yes father you are old.  Very old.  Really, really, extraordinarily, mind-bogglingly –‘

 

She turned to me for a clue.

 

‘Dog fuckingly’, I suggested.

 

‘- Dog-fuckingly old; said the duchess.   You are feebly, incontinently, desiccatedly, smelling-of boiled-cabbagely old.  You are brain–rottingly, balls-draggingly –‘

 

‘I'm fucking old!’ said Lear.”

 

Like King Lear I fucking old, I’ll stipulate that.

As exposed in my blog, like most old men I am full of advice, mainly because I am too old to go out and set a bad example. 

the Ol’Buzzard




4 comments:

  1. Time waits for no man, it's true. I read "Fool" several years ago and enjoyed it, after you first recommended this novel on your blog.

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  2. had to update the year to 2022 - oops

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  3. fuckme..don't remind me..I'm 79 and really feel the age this year. just turned 79 yet I find myself saying I'm damn near 80...and quickly get reminded by the gg's that oh you are not..but I feel it...life sucks and then you die.

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  4. Some people don't get to be old. Sometimes that is a blessing to that person and sometimes it is too soon. If I have my marbles and sight and hearing such as they are, I'm game to push the years. But who knows the speed at which we approach the abyss.

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COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."