WHO AM I?

“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being.”

Solzhenitsyn:  The Gulag Archipelago

 

Only my wife hasn't changed.
She is still the beautiful young woman I married. 

I am not a vain person.   I rarely study myself in a mirror.   My hair is curly so I never comb it – I just wet my hands and run them through my hair when I splash water in my face each morning after I wake up.  I never trim my beard or get a haircut until my wife complains that I am starting to look shaggy.  The few times I do look in a mirror I see a stranger looking back.

It has occurred to me that I am a totally different person – an incarnation of who I once was.  I have the same DNA of that earlier person, but there the likeness ends.   I do not look the same: my hair is silver, my ears are larger, my facial features are different, I am less physically fit.   The difference doesn’t end there: I have totally different values, different goals, different priorities, different likes and dislikes, and I am smarter than that younger person. 

I am in no way like my younger incarnation. 

 the Ol'Buzzard

RIDE THAT TRAIN

The age old question of old age occurs when you look in the mirror and an old person is staring back, and you ask yourself: When did I get so fucking old?  Not; how did I live so fucking long – because it doesn't seem long to you.  

You are born and you die: you don’t remember the first and you won’t remember the last.

Along the train ride of life you decided that what you are doing is important – that you are moving toward a goal and that you and the rest of the world will reach nirvana when all your goals are met – but your goals were always ill defined – it is just moving ahead that is important. 

You meet, you fuck, you marry, you fuck, you shoulder responsibilities, you have opinions, you work, you travel…     And time passes.    At some point it becomes a reality that life is finite.  You are riding on this train with no destination but you will have to get off before the last stop.

Humanity has been able to escape Darwinism because of its ability to communicate.   Communication has led to cooperation and innovation; but this same communication has allowed corporate and individual greed and avarice - wars and genocide - rape and disaster and unbelievable mass-inhumanity on a grand scale.   The outcome only reinforces the maxim that we are semi-intelligent animals living in a meaningless world; and our destination is nowhere.

It’s only Rock and Roll

Everyone dies

Go with the flow

And try to have a few laughs.

Cletus Purcell (James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux series.)

Have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard