A merry Christmas is possible, but unlikely. Too many matters would have to be ignored.
In one’s eighties the past offers more than the future provided one doesn’t succumb to nostalgia. That indulgent yearning for golden eras which never existed. I'm trying clear-eyed reflection
Not so much past events but the periods of change. The way science, via National Service, shaped the rest of my life. Those determined eighteen months in which I struggled to leave the West Riding of Yorkshire and eventually succeeded. A life split into two as I tasted the nature of marriage. The USA, as exotic as Saturn. My first editorship which opened up another door on what constitutes journalism. The long, long haul of children and how I eventually responded. Travel, lots of it. Comfortable wealth. Retirement and the gentle decline into whatever destiny the microbes working in concert with physical decay have in store for me.
Against several backgrounds. Intensive reading which slowly diminished to give way to writing fiction. Language as an alter ego. Music from the inside.
The rest – I hope – will consist of less guided reflection, wandering where it may to the accompaniment of popping champagne corks. The view from Carmel peninsula (see pic), chatting with Norm close to another peninsula – the Coromandel, buying a present for VR in a Tokyo department store, failing at golf.
My wishes for you – dear readers - will hardly be persuasive since I cannot summon up wishes for myself. Surely anyone can wish anything so WTH. Hope then? I hope for a reduction in worldwide irritation.
Salut! say the French. And you sort of hear their heels click.
A reduction in worldwide irritation would be great. Hoping is more passive than wishing. Sadly, hoping is also more realistic. Still, I'm a stubborn old broad. I wish for a merry Christmas for you and yours. Or maybe a raucous Saturnalia. Your choice.
ReplyDeleteColette: You know the way to my heart. I love five-syllable words. Misanthropically, of course. Xxx.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, clicking heels? We have yet to have escaped our Orange Adolf, however---that would be a huge burr of irritation removed from under my personal saddle.
ReplyDelete2020 and Old Age: the problem with not being with others has to be the resulting comparisons of your old self, current self, imagined self, and the future. Though like you, not much there to look forward to.
The first seed catalog came this week and my shoulder (hurt when throwing concrete rocks around the garden) instantly twinged like it wasn't six months ago. Many well wishes and hope for the New Year. Sandi
Sandi: But you touch on one solution: our "imagined" self. We are not limited to observable events. Imagination frees us to be anything we want, to explore phenomena we hardly know (in effect, to chat to ourselves), to risk a poem being bad, to envisage roasting the Orange Adolf over a slow fire.
DeleteYeah, my physical future may be over in the very next minute. But my imagined future may encompass aeons: I may throw stink bombs at errant dinosaurs, argue with the guy himself about why parts of Henry IV, part two, are sublime and others humdrum, I may re-drink the premier cru clarets my father served up in my youth and which would now cost £1000 a pop. Such indulgence.