Tuesday, December 30, 2008

I'm hardly even here anymore

It fascinates me that I still have readers here (from Massachusetts mostly). I don't know why you come here (I wish you'd give me a clue) to a blog that I hardly ever use.

I'm here now because of that comment from Robin. Robin, I don't see an immediate return to the sea in my future (if ever). Though the world economy bashing is probably going to take much of the wind out of my sails, I still feel that there's a ghost of a chance that I can get some Things accomplished over the next few years. Unless publishing completely caves in 2009, I've a book coming out. Unless funding of universities completely collapses in 2009, this may be the year that sees me able to do some work that actually makes a difference.

It's funny. Many years ago, when I was awarded tenure (by the skin of my teeth I expect, though one is never told those kinds of things flat-out), I promised myself that I would use what still seems to be holding up as an iron-clad job-for-life guarantee to do something good for the world. Though I'm not even fit to polish his shoes, I kind of had the idea of Noam Chomsky in the back of my mind. It seemed too far a reach that anyone whose specialty was the evolution of visual systems in odd little critters could make a positive difference in people's lives, so I thought I would make my contribution as he has -- by using my ability to communicate in writing to sway opinions, make people think, urge social action. It might only amount to letters to newspapers, perhaps a publication or two in a small press alternative journal, but it would be a way of justifying my existence. Well now, unexpectedly, I have that chance. It came from the sea -- you're right about that -- but I think the sea still needs me right here for a bit.

The timing of all of this is not great. I've discovered that one of the great liabilities of late-blooming is that one's physical body is entirely unwilling to tolerate much abuse without biting back. The worst of this year is that I've had several stern reminders that late middle-aged men cannot spend 18 hours/day 7 days/week sitting at screens or behind desks without suffering some consequences. I've developed some chronic conditions that will probably be with me forever now. I've caught them early enough that I'm fairly certain I can ride things out for a couple of decades -- I'm no longer counting on more, but if not for a few lucky warning signs and a vigilant family doctor (not to mention an insistent wife), I might have been down to my last few useful months on the planet. I've learned that I'm mortal, that things will not continue as they always have forever, and I'm trying hard not to respond with a quickening panic that I must get everything done quickly. It's been a transition. In May, I was in Vegas walking the streets with a Margarita so big it required a shoulder harness. Here in December I count (almost) every calorie and gram of refined carbohydrate, I actually have a little etch mark on the kitchen cabinet to keep me honest about the size of my wine pours, and I'm popping a variety of vitamins and dietary supplements just before I climb aboard the treadmill for my daily hour of hamster simulation.

But it's not all bad. At the same time that I'm letting go of a few of the entries on my life list that seem vanishingly unlikely now -- I'll probably never go high-altitude trekking in Tibet; it doesn't seem in the cards for me to have a guiltless hedonistic romp in the sack with a couple of smooth-skinned nymphomaniacs; I'll never have a six pack -- I'm learning how to love what's around me even a little more. There's nothing like the faint realization that some morning in the future you're not going to wake up to make you stare even more deeply into the jet-black five-year-old-eyes of a child who's just told you for the sixteenth time how much she loves you. When you've just waited about 2 seconds longer than you should have for your heart to take its next beat, there is no memory more vivid than that last glorious in-rush of cold winter air into your lungs.

It has been some time since I first tried to teach myself to live life as a succession of exquisite moments. But that's what it is.

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