The Aging Paradox - scene from Waking Life
(Two women are having lunch - English professor Lisa Moore and author Carole Dawson)

Time just dissolves into quick-moving particles that are swirling away. Either I’m moving fast or time is.
Never both simultaneously.

It’s such a strange paradox. I mean, while, technically, I’m closer to the end of my life than I’ve ever been, I
actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world. When I was younger, there was a
desperation, a desire for certainty, like there was an end to the path, and I had to get there.

I know what you mean, because I can remember thinking, “Oh, someday, like in my mid-thirties maybe,
everything’s going to just somehow gel and settle, just end.” It was like there was this plateau, and it
was waiting for me, and I was climbing up it, and when I got to the top, all growth and change would
stop. Even exhilaration. But that hasn’t happened like that, thank goodness. I think that what we don’t
take into account when we’re young is our endless curiosity. That’s what’s so great about being human.

Yeah, yeah. Well do you know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity?

No.

Well, he’s talking about like, say, a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image,
and you say, “That’s me.” Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and
breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, “This was me when I was a year old, and
then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am.” So it takes a story
that’s actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity.

And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We’ve already become
completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially
ourselves.

Because almost three decades.
Because the first sweetheart has a wife and a kid.
Because my father’s hair is now gray.
Because now both knees crack when I bend them a certain way, and ache when I work them too hard.
Because the poetry turned, folded over like a wave, dissipated and created a new one.
Because I no longer romanticize bars.
Because I’ve learned to describe things with more care.
Because the old favorites are weathered, yellow, or deliver less of an impact. From bowling ball in the gut to
featherbed shove.
Because everything is different. The stack of still frames in my head. Because I am full of things like water,
blood, history.
Because I’m on a new seven. And my hands are mine but still commencing introduction. Because everything
held is touching now. Because gone because here because between.
Because “that is what’s so great about being human.”

I know, I know–I’m not winning the prized ham for updating my website(in a consistent manner) any time soon. That’s
fine. I don’t eat ham anyway.

In summary, real quicklike, these things happened:

My nephew, Cohen, was born 5 weeks early. He had to stay in the hospital for a few weeks so his lungs could grow
stronger. I was a bit of a mess until he was born–a ball of worry and stress 5 hours away from where I felt I should
be. And then the wait for him to finally go home. Now the fun begins for my sister–a new life with two little ones.
I’m going home next weekend to meet little Cohen for the first time, and I fully expect to ball my eyes out. He’s a
miracle. I’m thrilled to meet a brand new relative, to have another young person in my life to show me how to look
at the world again with a less cynical and more imaginative eye. It’s so fascinating to watch them grow and become
who they are, and to have some tiny part on that. Sidenote: I’ve started writing letters for both my niece Maddie and
for Cohen, and I’m going to save them so that down the road they have them. I don’t want to just be the aunt; I feel
compelled to show them a bit about who I am as a person. I also have grand plans for writing some children’s books
for their shelves.

I’ve been wrestling with a serious block with my writing, and the fight is like trying to take a shadow to the ground. The
shadow that happens to be attached to my feet. I need to focus on patience and living. It’s all there beneath the
surface–I haven’t lost a single thing.

My heart quit dipping and started boom-booming again. I’ve got a good thing going, one that I don’t have to bend over
backwards to describe. I’ve laughed more since April than I have in a very very long time. It’s good. It’s better than
good. It’s damn past wonderful.

Went to the dentist and had my cracked tooth fixed. A tiny thing corrected, but it’s funny what a difference the little things
can make. I’m also putting the miles in on the bike, riding until my legs are jellyish, giggly things. It’s the good kind
of tired, the kind of tired I need in order to feel better mentally and physically.

Renee and I finished the press release for our fundraiser show on July 7th. I’ll be posting the details soon. We squared
away a feature in Cleveland, and more are on the way in Chicago, Indianapolis, Dayton, maybe(hopefully) other
cities. It is officially summer. I’m in it, sweating like a champ and staying out for as long as I can. Hiking in the
woods and tiptoeing into lakes. Every experience feels tremendous, even standing in the Strip District staring at the
local grown flowers or trying on viking hats in Feinbergs. If you love your life then make it yours.

More soon.

The saying goes: time owes you nothing. Doesn’t need to teach, doesn’t need to lean on explanation or reasons for the brief,
the length–the increments ticking yet constantly abandoned. Too busy living. Too loud, too fast, too focused. Rain in the
wires, voices reduced to pin drops in static. I believe it. I’m not owed anything. But sometimes time flips up the hem of its
distance, and you see it and it’s okay. Even makes sense, might even make it better. You trace the line, a little amused
with dragging it through everywhere you’ve been. From there to there to here, eventually. Shift one thing and you move a
world.

abbreviated questions for the couch cushions
(draft 1)

Would you trade madness for consistency?
The car for better shoes, or
a camera for the car
or one thing written for you
for all of it–

Isn’t the vase
a wonderful structure
for something
born wild?

Just a note to say life’s thrown me a bit sideways lately…I will update soon.

I turn twenty-nine in eleven days and I think I can say I’m ready, whatever ready means. I guess you do get to a point of
self-tolerance–where after a while fighting the self is a battle beyond boring, and it starts playing out like
choreography. You can call every move and motive, every self-inflicted injury. You start telling yourself not to turn
around–soon enough going forward becomes a habit.

A couple things. Like tonight in the back seat of a car, in awe of a sunset as if I haven’t seen one of those suckers before.
The slow motion drift of flags on the hill, hands in my lap stilled, heavy with words and no pen because it’s just the
moment, all I’ve got and everything I need. I went to the neurologist and after an appointment that lasted past 2 hours
it was pretty much concluded–main culprit being genetics, a brain that craves chemical correcting, so I have another
pill to fight the inevitable. Injections to try for the attacks themselves. In other news my heart rate remains chill at 52
bpm and aside from some stubborn neurons in the reflexes and the predisposition, I’m okay. I’ll keep fighting to live
more than half my life, my makeshift midafternoon nights–I’ll keep rationing my coffee and leaving when I need to. I’ll
keep remaining humble to my good days. I’ll keep enjoying the hell out of them.

It seems like too much at once but I’m trying to maintain the view outside of my mind–outside of where things get tangled
and messy and a bit too fast. School is making me nervous but I’m plugging along, muttering “this is your last math
class ever” under my breath when I need to. The poetry readings have been steady and supportive–the new book is
officially taking form. I’m somewhere in the hips and next I’ll form the lungs. I believe in my work. Another exquisite
evolution with this age and experience thing; the solid force behind it just grows and grows.

So. Twenty-nine? Bring it. I wait patient with a handshake.

muhammad ali & joe frazier, 2003

“It was easier to get Ali to pose than Frazier. Joe still resented all the torment Ali had caused him
over the years. Ali had made all the money, too. Joe finally agreed to pose when we offered to go to his
gym in Philadelphia.I knew it would be a difficult shoot because Ali had Parkinson’s and, I learned that day,
Frazier had diabetes. Ali walked in, and I set a stool in the ring for him to sit on. Joe said, “What about me?
Man, I can barely walk. My legs are killing me.” But they were happy, joking around and hamming it up in
every shot.Near the end I switched from color to sepia film. I said, “Look, guys, just stare at the camera. No
smiles, no gags.” I did one frame, then a second, and there it was, the picture I was looking for: two
battered warriors who’d left their lives in the ring.” - Walter Iooss Jr./SI

I was seven years old when I had my first migraine. A hazy image of playing in the drive way, and my stepfather
spraying a weed chemical around the edge of the house. The smell of it entered me, and stayed.

I can see unbearable bus rides home from school, and afternoons spent in the nurse’s office–head pressed between
palms fighting the crying. Track meets I couldn’t compete in last minute–huddled beneath the bleachers with
my warm up pants over my head, or throwing up on my hands and knees behind the concession stand.
Headlights that forced me to pull over, and head pain that sent me home from work again and again and
again–crawling back through the front door, shivering on public transportation, falling back into bed. All the
talks with bosses about my poor attendance. The emergency rooms with their televisions tuned into talk
shows(always too loud, always so bright). All the doctors plucking hard to pronounce medication names from
the air above them, all the fights with significant others, all the shows and gigs and readings I had to leave
early from or miss altogether. Where do all the lost weekends go? What of the countless days I transformed
into makeshift nights just so I could pass out in peace? The kind of peace that drags the hammers and tension
and throbbing along with it. Peace with a hangnail, peace with a problem. You take what you can get.

I offer the information freely now but I still try to hide it. Still stay out because I’m not done living yet, even though
my skull has detached, even though the scenery jumps and swivels and hurts me. I need both hands and a
foot to list the medications.

Tomorrow is my appointment at the headache clinic, an appointment made six months ago. This is a typical wait
for the facility. I’m scared for a few reasons. I’m not sure what to expect. Poking and prodding? Lots of
questions, I’m sure–a run down of the history. Another MRI, CAT scan in my future? I’m so used to not getting
answers–I’m afraid of that outcome once again repeating itself. I’m more educated on the matter than I have
ever been–I can recite my triggers like the alphabet. I’m already on a medication that seems to be helping.
Will they sentence me to another pill?

A couple weapons in my arsenal left, and this is one of them. This is a big one. I’m walking in there tomorrow
remaining hopeful, and I’m walking in there with a broken heart, tired nerves. I’m sure they’ve seen it all. I
bet they won’t care if I break down while going over my history–to think of all the experience lost, the
connections strained. To think of all those in-the-thick-of-it moments where I did nothing but apologize or
writhe around or beg for a death. The bad ones force my neck in the dirt. In the fire, in that blurry version of
nonreality that I cannot give you in coherent times. A version where the sun is murder and sound is assault
and I cannot make a fist.

Will there be a day when it comes less and less? And what might the days be like after that?

I went down for a nap at 8pm last night, and didn’t wake up until 1:52 in the morning. A storm approaching. Once the
lightning started, I put on my robe and went to the living room, lit one candle and sat on the couch listening to
the wind bend trees into choruses. Like the thunder starts up and the limbs & leaves attempt to shush it.
Fifteen minutes later I went back to bed and slept for six more hours.

Now it’s today and I’m on the other end of some of the best dreams I’ve ever had. Handfuls of closure, little scenes so
wonderful that I know they couldn’t be anything but real. The script my heart is busying writing acted out.