Day: August 6, 2014

In Vermont, some farmers are growing sunflowers instead of corn and selling the flowers to power companies for bio-diesel fuel. a beautiful crop to see and photograph. Heading for New York early Thursday, I’m not bringing a computer, not blogging for a couple of days.

I hope to soak up the energy of New York, I hope to see the horses and the drivers, the mayor’s ban looms over them, I hope to find good Thai restaurants (easy there) and see some movies. Someone told Maria that I have been softened up by the surgery, but I suspect that is a projection. People feel softer about me since the surgery, I think I am actually edgier and more uncertain. I think people grow and evolve, but I am not convinced that they can become different people so easily, not even from getting your heart stopped. Real change takes a lot of slogging work.

I have never been easy around a lot of people, many people are not easy around me. I don’t really know why, it has been true for most of my life, I just accept it. I know I make a lot of people uncomfortable, I am surprised to hear I intimidate some people. You can never see yourself the way other people see you, I can say my wife does not find me intimidating in the least, which is a good thing, love does not bloom under those conditions.

I am getting pretty comfortable with who I am, I am learning to like me as well as my heart and my body. I am the only me I have. I have some good and close friends now, I like it. I have love in my life and I like that. I am writing every day and that makes me very happy.   I only love photography more the more I do it. Age can be liberating, not just confining, and I do not worry much about whether people like me or not or approve of me. That is one entitlement of growing older.

I ask myself two things when I write: How do I feel about it? Is it true? If the answer to both questions is yes and is known to me, then I am off. I mean to get lost in the big city, to drown a bit in it, to soak up it’s energy and chaos. I do not believe that the ban on the carriage horses will succeed, it is both unjust and indefensible, but I don’t want to take any chances on not seeing them before they are banned either, if that happens. I believe in truth and I believe in justice, and both ride on the backs of the big and beautiful horses.

We went to another doctor’s appointment today, this one in Bennington, Vt., I am sick of doctors – even nice ones – and their forms and their precautions, and I have good doctors and am grateful for them. But I am also sick of me and my recovery, it seems like it has been going on forever. It is time for something else to get into my head.

I can carry my camera now and it is going with me to New York. I need to see the carriages horses and the drivers – the mayor hopes to ban them shortly – and to walk in the park, eat Thai food, see a movie or two, go to a museum with Maria. We both love to do this together, we are planning a lot of walking, a lot of people-watching.

So tomorrow Maria and I are heading to New York City for two days – my birthday is Friday. We decided to break out a bit and get some vanilla custard at a true American summer ice cream stand in Bennington, one with hundreds of options, flavors, stickers and signs. We considered it the beginning of our little breakout. I had a kid’s cup, it was about the size of my thumb. New York will clear my head.

I posted a piece earlier today about how I had taken Red to the pasture, gotten a telephone call and forgotten him for more than an hour. When I came out, he was right where I left  him, dutiful creature that he is. It was a fun thing, and people on Facebook had an appropriately good time with it, although I did notice one message seemed to chuckle: “a senior moment: We get more and more of them as we get older.” When I saw this message I knew I had to write about old people talk, because I learned the hard way that not only is it not funny and rarely true, it can kill you as quickly as heart disease.

In America, older people are the invisible people, they have largely vanished from movies, music, TV shows, magazines and popular culture. Marketers don’t care about us because we don’t have decades of buying life ahead of us.  Although we learn all the time not to denigrate people – African-Americans, women, Native-Americans, Muslims, Jews – older people don’t have to fight being denigrated, they do it to themselves all of the time.

Several years ago, I started struggling walking up hills, it got so bad I could barely walk 20 years down the road. I can’t tell you how many people – myself included – said things like “well, at our age,” “we’re not getting any younger,” “of course, as we get older.” I was convinced my breathing troubles were caused by my age- I was just getting older, I told Maria, and she believed it –  until an exasperated cardiologist looked at my X-rays and practically shouted at me,”what’s wrong with you? You’re not too old to walk!”

Of course he was right. My leaving Red in the pasture was not a “senior moment” either, I have been forgetful all of my life, often in much worse ways than this morning. I rarely forget things I need to do, I do not have “more and more” of these moments all the time.Nor do most of the people I know who are my age, they function well and efficiently.

Anyone at any age can get distracted by a phone call, it happens to Maria, my daughter, and everyone that I know. Older people are not necessarily all doddering fools, every stumble is not a sign of decay, and why would one chuckle about it if it were? We can, I am happy to report, work hard and successfully, write on blogs every day, answer scores of e-mails, take care of dogs and donkeys, remember our chores and medicines, have sex, write books, take photos and meet our commitments. Even remember our dogs in the pasture 99 times out of 100. Every single day. On top of that, we can walk four or five miles a day if we want and keep track of a dozen different medicines.

It is degrading to attribute life’s natural and normal moments to aging and senility. Dementia and senility are real, but they are diseases, and I don’t happen to have either one of them. Most older people do not. I am doing many more things in many more ways than ever before in my life, and I want to say to those of you who are beginning to get older – and to those of you who are younger as well – do not engage in old people talk, at least not to me. It is cruel and demeaning, and I have to say, it can also kill you as quick as a heart attack.

I’m afraid I’m in even more trouble with the social media police than I was before. This morning I took Red out in the pasture, and then while I was still outside I heard a call from the house from my cardiologist, I’d been trying to reach him for days about a change in my medication. I went inside to get it, told Red to stay.

The call took awhile, was followed by two more calls I needed to take, and then I went into my study to blog, check on a photograph, send a new chapter in my book to my editor. I completely forgot about Red. About an hour later, I leaned back in my chair and noticed Red was not lying there, where he usually is when I am sitting at my desk. I looked around, called for him, and then realized I had left him out in the pasture. I went outside and saw him exactly where I had left him.

He hadn’t moved an inch. It was sunny but not hot, but there were plenty of flies. I would not faulted him if he had moved, but I think Red would starve to death out there rather than move when he had been told to stay. It’s the second time this happened, I told him if wouldn’t be so bad if he were a little less obedient. I’m glad the social media police don’t have guns or badges yet.

My wife is unlike any other person I have ever known. She is an artist in her bones and soul, she is a witch and a pagan, she is a farm wife and a mystic, she is an animal lover in every way. We are plotting a brief September vacation, and we are thinking about the ocean, and I went off on my old riff about Whale Watches. I don’t like them, I tend to get seasick, it takes hours of cruising around to find the whales, and they seem boring to me sitting out there, like floating sofas.

I was in the middle of this rant – we took our morning walk together – and I saw my wife’s face, she had her hood on to keep the bugs off and she look at me in the most direct and innocent way. “I would love to see a whale,” she said simply.

So our plans will change. We will go on a whale watch and i will adjust my thinking about it, open my mind to the beauty and wonder of the whale, the pleasure of a boat ride out into the wind, the chance of some beautiful photographs, the opportunity to see Maria’s face light up when she sees one of those magnificent and storied creatures out on the ocean surface.

“I love animals,” she said. It is true, enough said. I love whale watches.