As I grow old and grey and full of sleep (to borrow from
Yeats), my attention is increasingly divided between the very long past and the foreshortening future. Inevitably, this is a time of regret for that which has not
been, and trepidation for that which is bound to be. I often think these days
that I wish I had the years to do over again, but almost immediately
realize that I would just make the same stupid mistakes, and so the longing for
bygone years is pointless.
I find that as time shortens it slows. Everything seems to
move more slowly now, from my perceptions to my joints, from my intuitions to
my ambitions. I have less time, and so I want less for myself, though I do
still long for the most and best for those I love. And that circle of affection
has narrowed almost entirely to my children, and to my new grandchild. For her,
above all, since she is so new to the world, so pure and full of promise, I
desire and hope for the broadest, deepest, most fulfilling experience of life,
for the ecstasy of flowering imagination and the tragedy of unmasked reality.
For myself, I must find a way to be content with what I have remaining to me:
work, and worry, and a declining sense of wonder. Thus, happiness becomes
acceptance of resignation.
My hands no longer work as they once did. I have always
admired the prolific virtuosity of human hands; it is amazing what they can accomplish,
the wide range of skills and intricate moments of movement which have enabled
them to build and to destroy, to sign and shape and make imagination possible. They
are capable of everything from musicality to murder, and from cruelty to
caress. My hands always served me well, yet now, more and more, they defy my
intentions and frustrate my efforts. I drop things, they simply slip from my
fingers which once were so fervent in their grasping. I knock things over and
lose things, and I look at my hands in a kind of mournful awe. ‘We have done your
work,’ they seem to be telling me, ‘and now we will do our own will.’
The past, though it forms the bulk of my consciousness, I
try not to dwell upon, for, as Lear said, ‘That way madness lies.’ If I were to
allow myself the lurid luxury of living in the past, I would certainly lose
such tenuous grip as I have upon the present, and whatever shredded hopes
remain to me for the future. I know too well the mistakes that I have made –
they haunt me continually like spectral hounds, yowling and yapping after me with
greater alacrity as my forward momentum wanes. For, you see, as time slows toward its end,
the past rages closer, feeding on the diminishing momentum to which age
condemns you. And so, try as I might, I find it more and more futile to escape
the past with its snarling regrets and slavering demand for remorse.
Health and its perils you think more on, of course, and you
must make a conscious effort not to talk about them since nothing is more
tedious to young people than such talk. Unable to imagine themselves at your
age, as you once were unable to imagine yourself as aged, they will at best
endure your conversation about your health with kindly toleration. But you cannot
help but see in their eyes and facial expressions and incipient movements toward
the door or just toward a different subject, their roiling impatience, and so,
one of the most pressing truths about yourself becomes a social taboo, and you
feel even more isolated in your declining constitution. I have found that it is
actually a relief to speak to people my own age since they understand that
health is a pressing subject, and that it presses more and more as time grows
short. And so, I allow myself to bask in talk of heart and kidneys and spine
and mental powers in the rare conversations I have with my contemporaries. It
serves to relieve the burden momentarily of the lonely consequence of age.
Looking forward is similar to looking into a mirror. You are
reminded in every sag and wrinkle that time cannot reverse itself, and that
since there is really nothing in the future for you but oblivion, you must
gather all your strength to accomplish as much as you can before the end. And
yet, you struggle against your own depleting energy, straddling a steepening fence
line between what you feel compelled to do and what you still are capable of. People
have often pointed out that I am a workaholic, and though I have never really
thought of myself that way, in comparison to what I find that I can do these
days, it now seems to have been true. Yes, I still have a headful of ideas and
plans and projects, but they must be measured against the yardsticks of energy
and time. That would seem to impose a need to devote oneself to the most
important affairs, but there is, too, a sense that, having lived so long and
worked so hard, I deserve a rest. And so, I find in my waking hours what I
often tell myself at bedtime, when I hesitate to turn out the light: ‘You’ll
have plenty of time to sleep in the dark soon enough.’
And so I go on working, and worrying about the future (my
own and that of my loved ones), and trying to savor what little is left to me
of the wonder that has driven my existence since the very first moment that I
realized I existed, a moment of great peril and promise that has itself become lost
to me in time.
