I am aware of the soreness of my body. I feel it especially in my lower back and hips, “the cradle” so to speak. The core is sore. I feel it especially when I get out of bed or out of chair or the car. These aches are almost my friends I’ve know them so long but now they are getting downright rude. I know many suffer far worse than me but Christ this is how it feels to be wearing out? I think I will quit the gym and spend my time at the pool. I’ll join the seniors for water arobics,lounge in the hot whirlpool, take steam baths and gossip. I’ll have good company. We’ll surely have a contest concerning our arthritis, the gout, flatulence, kidney stones, coranaries, bypasses and new knees, not including ungrateful children, memories of dead in-laws, pensions, health plans, doctors and pain.
I am also aware of the torpor of my spirit. Does it too dwindle with age? I depend upon my activities. I rarely sit alone doing absolutely nothing. I am aware I must have a distraction at all times, even sleep has it’s imaginary rituals and my dreams testify to my neuroticism. I generally wander from my studio to my typer, an old term which should be properly called The Word Processor. My art and my writing, however enjoyable, are “projects” in my mind. They are life-long ambitions in the process of fulfillment. As such this is only natural. But I work often from an inner emptiness. The nagging hollowness within demands escapes from what is. It takes the form of depression, drinking and smoking. My vanity demands attention if only that of the two or three I write to. I am constantly checking the E-mail. It’s pathetic. I see the dependency. It results in a psychological state of inner division, conflict, cognitive distortions, and obsession with becoming somebody if even the odd codger with an odd website, a couple of thinly veiled inverse novels, an attic of poetry voluminously arranged in looseleaf binders, each a different perversity, and a collection of weird art, none of it ever sold.
I don’t believe this is negativity or self-pity, although the latter has been a visitor too. Rather the awareness I am living a vain life. This insight frees me.
