Entries from July 2008 ↓

I’ve always had this sense that I’m growing old too fast, that time is passing me by at a rate out of my control. Sometimes it leads me to believe that I’m older than I really am and the “get off my lawn” in me comes out until something or someone brings me crashing back down from my naivety in what is often quite humbling or embarrassing circumstances.

But now it’s starting to show. And I don’t mean in the corny sense of creaking bones and making groaning noises whenever you get in or out of your seat.

My locks are taking leave of me.

This is something kind of difficult for me to accept. Two years ago I had two feet of out-of-control red hair bursting from my head like a wild mane, but now my hair is shorter cut and the quiet thinning and recession of the hairs atop my head give me a very solemn pause. It’s somewhat confronting. There is no way to deny the physical, my body is aging, decaying. I had a basic urge to fight back, to revolt. I fossicked through the back of my mind for the names of hair replacement therapy centres passed onto me through the television on the lips of muscle-bound early thirties coming fresh out of the surf or with some blonde pet draped around them underarm. But that’s not my answer. It’s a futile attempt to hide from time, from nature, to fight the future. If this is what the ravages of time have in store for me, then I have only to accept it. Just like a scar or mended bone, the tone of skin and shape of face that I was born into, this is my lot, and I will learn to love it, and in part because of its flaws, not in spite of them.

There is no fighting change, and my body grounds me in that more than most things. Sometimes I feel I have to run twice as fast just to stay where I am, that I’m constantly having to try harder to keep as fit as I once kept by simply rolling out of bed each day (and sometimes not).

My fear of age is of finding myself too late for something, late for living, for being alive. That is where my concern is born from. But I’ve never heard the starters gun, nor had sight of the finish line. So while I remain aloof of this tracks destination, to struggle against moving from this station, in body, mind or any other measure seems the eternal errand of fools.

You might notice that some of my posts now start to appear pre-dated. The reason for this is my starting to write on dead tree to help me keep up the practice, then transcribing them to digital at a later date. This will be the first, hopefully of many.

This evening saw the salvation of my mortal soul as I teetered on the brink of the fall to hell. A special hell, reserved for pretentious bastards who would pay $32 for a notebook. I spent a minute with it in my hands, a plain ruled Moleskine, so very neat and perfect for its purpose. The display stand was merely feet from the cashier and I was beginning to bond with the idea of a glorified book with a lacky-band stuck to it, when it dawned on me that I could feed myself for half a week on the cost. So instead I picked up this 192 page exercise book from Woolworths at the princely sum of one dollar and twelve cents, and jammed it in the shopping basket between the sausages and orange juice I was now able to feast on thanks to my thriftiness in other matters.

I’ve been down on myself a lot lately for failing to write, so I’m toying with a new approach. When I was teaching and studying, spending all day with chalk or pen in hand, sitting down to braindump through a keyboard was a welcome and therapeutic relief, but now as I spend my working hours pounding out notes in front of the dull glow of the computer screen, sitting down to type in my own time seems somewhat forced and cumbersome, so I have devised the idea of fleshing out my cognitions to paper through pen to give it a degree of freshness or relief for me, to help avoid the feeling of it being a chore.

Hopefully once I manage to get myself back into the swing and groove of writing again and bridging the divide between print and thought, I’ll once again be able to form more clear thoughts, more flowing prose, more… well, basically less rubbishing on about the minutia of my life and writing something actually worth spilling ink for.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep to task and avoid filling the pages of this log with my constant to-do lists, reminders to pick up groceries and fanciful cost plans for my latest daydream on how to spend the upcoming weeks lottery jackpot.

Here’s to the start of a new habit.