A Day in the Life of Chaos

  As you age everyday is a mystery.  In the morning you wake up and like a computer booting up do a systems check.  Knee working, back not hurting, headache nope feel fresh, urinary system functioning, the list goes on… everything okay… check… it’s going to be a good day.  Then the morning routine kicks in.  A handful of pills and a cup of coffee.   Salvador Dali At some point there is a certain realization that nothing will ever get better.  When you have a car you can at least buy a new set of tires.  There is a good chance that they will work as good as the original ones if not better.  Every time I have to replace some part of my house I always ask the service man how this new version of whatever I had will make my life better.  Typically they will shrug and give me a look that says, “Just wait for the bill.”  Sometimes, not to be defeated, I will pore over the service manual or promotional material and relish the smallest detail.  I definitely did this when I had to spend 13,00

As you grow older it seems like events increasingly mark age.   They are like a highlighter illuminating a moment of our existence.   Today I opened an article that explained to me that on this day in 1967 the Beatles released Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.   I would have been 20 days old.   If you tried to explain this album to young people today it would be as mythical as the Iliad and the Odyssey.   Hell even people of my generation are often disconnected, post Beatle remnants.   Technology is the most vulnerable to rapid change and a lack of understanding from one generation to the next.  Often words can become meaningless or non-sensical in just twenty years time.  I often make a joke when I hear a phone ringing that increasingly no one understands.  The ring sounds and I yell “I’ll get it.”  In the era of cellular telephones attached to everyone of this who understands.  When I was young we had a single telephone in the house we all shared.  When a phone call came in some

As you age it becomes increasingly difficult to segregate moments of time.   Our memories can recall events yet trying to reconcile the event with age can be problematic at best.   I find that if I start with an event I can build a recollection however, if I was to start with an age, say what happened to me when I was 8 years old, it is nearly impossible to construct.   There are times when I attempt to torture my mind by trying to rebuild a picture of not only an instant but everything that was around me.   Often times our only recollections are programmed around photographs that remind us and often reconstruct moments long forgotten.   When does this happen in life?  How old are we when our minds transition to a point of fogginess with incidental clarity?  I have recently taken interest in period television that reconstructs the past.  My past.  I drift away from the story to analyze the environments and try to recall if it was the same as I remembered.  Sometimes when I watch a pe

One thing that never ceases to amaze any parent is the perspective of age when seen through the eyes of a child. This morning I was eating my microwave oatmeal and watching CNN.  A story came on about the latest revelation of John F Kennedy's affairs.   Nearly 50 years since his death we still learn tales of his voracious sexual appetite.  Oh those were the days for a president.  The male club that surrounded him was sure to keep all his indiscretions close to their belts as most were engaged in similar ones.  Of course it is a phenomenon  not unique to males as Eleanor Roosevelt had her own lesbian and or bisexual lover.  Something about JFK entrances us though.  He was so damn good looking.  I commented to my son how much JFK did love the ladies.  He in turn asked me if I remembered JFK's presidency? "Son, I wasn't even born." I answered.  "His brother was assassinated when I was gurgling and blowing boogers out of my nose at the tender age of one."

Last night I was sitting with my son.  With fourteen years of age under his belt he was responsibly doing his homework while I at forty-four I was playing a video game.  I was hacking my way across Oblivion when I felt his finger touch the skin behind my ear.  I imagined I must have had some ugly black piece of crud, perhaps a remnant of nuzzling with the dog.  "I don't like that."  He said. "What is it?" I asked him. I wondered, did I have a cancerous spot or something?  He pushed his finger against my skin again pulling it flat. "It's a wrinkle.  I don't want my pop to grow old."  He said hugging me.  "I have gotten used to the age spots you used to not have yet now do but I don't like this wrinkle." He noticed the distress on my face and added in a consoling way, "I guess you are only in your forties Pop, you are not that old." When you are a child everything seems new.  The girls you know have skin still

As we grow old we can't help but notice the effects on our bodies.  Age is not kind.  The young body is viewed as the ideal, the old body is the result of living life.  It is like an old car.  It is no longer shiny and beautiful, it doesn't run as well but while taking longer, it still gets you there.  It is almost as if we are a product.  When we are born we are wrapped in the cellophane of our mother's womb.  We enter the world free from blemish, our minds have yet to be written and our bodies yet to be scarred.  Like an annual growing from a seed we seem so free from declination.  Our flower has yet to bloom and our seeds have yet to fall.  When we do flower, in our minds we reach perfection.  As a father I remember the day when my son scarred himself for the first time.  The beautiful product once protected by plastic was no longer new.  The problem with aging is that for many of us, our bodies change yet our minds never do.  While we collect life experience and wisdo

Growing older is a stage in life.  It doesn't matter if you are young or old, the constant is always the progression of age.  Coupled with this, is the feeling of being left behind. It happens to us usually when we are associated with a group.  We seldom hearken back to a moment in time, rather a period of life when our minds and emotions were satisfied.  When we shared a commonality with others in an experience.  Youth provides fertile ground for this.  It is a unique stage of life when we are surrounded by a group experiencing exactly the same thing.  We see them day to day and often feel the same frustrations, the same pain.  It is a time when others share our age and we gaze out through the window of life from the same perspective.  I think for this reason when we age we often look back at our youthful years with nostalgia like none others.  They were a time of innocence when our lives were still largely unwritten.   Life presented few constraints over possibility. For this

"Beauty isn't only skin deep." Oh we all know that but who really believes it? In a world where our icons are the beautiful and whom are about as far from reality as I am from flying into space, it makes me wonder what the true definition of beauty is. Men are particularly challenged when we try to define it. We are taught from the beginning of our lives that beauty and the sex symbol go hand in hand. Beauty is defined by an actress in a pornographic movie or a model in a Victoria Secrets catalog. It is the 20 something in a tight dress swaying her hips as she walks down the street drawing our eyes and with them our desires. Reality of course reminds us of our inherent fear by paying homage to our middle-aged bodies. This fear speaks like an oracle to the Greeks and shames us into never trying to make a real contact. In truth the vast majority of us were never able to make contact even pre-middle age. We prefer to speculate with our friends or in our minds

So when did I grow old? All around me there are signs but I can't see them? I can't feel them. I think anyone that has a child feels it the most. One day they say something and immediately their mind turns on itself and asks the question, were those words from my mouth or my parents? Last night I was playing a video game on my son's Xbox. I was engaged with some alien civilization but that's not what is important. Over and over again, my son's friends kept sending messages asking me to join their party. Sadly, I am quite certain they assumed it was Noah playing and not his 42 year old father. I seriously doubt a 12 year old wanted to "party" with me. Despite this cruel reality, I felt oddly offended. I mean wasn't it within the realm of possibility in their little minds that the player could actually be Noah's father? Come on kids, I grew up in the era when video games were invented. Doesn't that count for something? Of course