Tag: Leonard Cohen

Projections of Old Age

Jenny Joseph was only in her twenties when she wrote her ubiquitous poem “Warning” (“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple”).  It projects a feisty version of old age; however, the poems she wrote in her own old age were much more credible.  This is from “A Patient Old Cripple” written when she was in her eighties:

I curse the world that blunders into me, and hurts

But know

Its bad fit is the best we can do.

When Jenny Joseph was very old, according to the BBC she found herself somewhat “annoyed” by the success of her early poem, which overshadowed her whole career.  So, the old ladies in purple dresses and red hats are really the projection of a young adult on how she would like her own old age to be.  What do we think about that?

This got me thinking about the difference between how we thought we would be in old age (or maybe how we hoped to be) and the actuality of our later years. Do our expectations of what it would be like to be old influence what kind of old person we become?  Old age was something I thought about even in middle age.  I was aware that I had been somewhat unconscious (sometimes downright comatose) during my earlier phases – youth, young adulthood, middle age – but I set out to craft a more conscious old age.  To help me think about that, I looked to literature.  And, representations of the old in literature include both those of the young imagining older characters, and old people writing about old characters like themselves.

When we are very lucky, we find authors and other artists who create over a full lifetime.  I find it particularly interesting to examine how their work has changed over the years and have written about that here and here.  Some writers have worked over the decades of a long life, consider the authors Wendell Berry or Marilynne Robinson, the poets Gary Snyder or Mary Oliver, and songwriters Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen.

In cases like that of Jenny Joseph, we even have the youthful projections of a young writer as to what old age will be like.  For example, we have Jonathan Swift’s list of life rules, “When I Come to Be Old” (hence the title of this blog), which were written when he was 32 and working as secretary to a much older man.  This old man’s habits are presumably inscribed as “thou shalt nots” on the list, and the notable and scary thing is that contemporary descriptions of Swift’s old age match the negative qualities Swift swears to avoid.  Swift did, however, recognize the futility of such rules in the last rule: “Not to set up for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none.”  And, of course, Swift was a notoriously difficult old man – how much of his character as an old man was the result of his expectations?  Or out of his control?

Lately we’ve been finally watching Monk, so I’ve had Randy Newman (who does the theme song “It’s a Jungle Out There”) on my mind.  Newman, age 82, is still alive and has had an even longer and diverse career than I was aware of, having written the scores for several of the Pixar movies (which I haven’t seen).  I remember him most fondly for songs like “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” (1968), and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”  He wrote the wonderful “God’s Song” for the hilarious movie Cold Turkey in 1971.  And, of course, he spawned controversy.  Remember “Short People” or the mock xenophobic song “I’m Dreaming of a White President” that he wrote for Barak Obama?  It contains the prescient lyrics:

I’m dreaming of a white President
Just like the ones we’ve always had
A real live white man who knows the score
How to handle money
Or start a war
Wouldn’t even have to tell me
What we were fighting for
He’d be the right man…

Randy Newman wrote an early song (1972), when he was only 29, called “Old Man,” about a dying father – and then another in 2017, about an old man losing his wife: “Lost Without You.”  Newman’s lyrics are always worth paying attention to, and I will decline to post the full lyrics here.  (You can find them by clicking on the song titles above.)  The early song was the words of the young man trying to communicate with his dying old man.  “Can you hear me?” the younger singer repeats over and over again.  He is ruthless.  He assumes the old man does not want to die; he assumes that he could open his eyes if he wanted to.  He reminds the old man that there “Won’t be no God to comfort you / You taught me not to believe that lie” and that “You don’t need anybody, nobody needs you.”  Newman’s tongue might be in his cheek, as it often is, but it is a cruel song.  As an old person, I would have opened my eyes just to tell this impertinent young person to leave my side.  “Don’t cry, everybody dies.”  Yes, everybody dies but almost everyone also cries.

The second song (written when Newman was about 71) is narrated by an old man (perhaps the young man from the earlier song grown old?) who is sitting by his wife’s deathbed.  The children are apparently complaining about their father and the mother rebukes them:

“Make sure he sleeps in his bed at night
Don’t let him sleep in that chair
If he holds out his hand to you, hold it tight
If that makes you uncomfortable
Or if it embarrasses you
I don’t care.”

And the old man speaks of his fears:

Even if I knew which way the wind was blowing
Even if I knew this road would lead me home
Even if I knew for once where I was going
I’m lost out here
Baby, I’m lost out here
I’m lost out here without you…

The older Newman is definitely on the side of the old folks – the old dying woman who wants to make sure someone will take care of the love of her life and the old man who is “lost out here without you.”  Newman has come a long way from “You don’t need anybody.”  These are real people who are really dying, and they are not afraid of dying – they are just afraid they will not be able to take care of each other anymore.  And we feel that now he knows what it feels like to be the elder.

I encourage you to read the books of the old – not just about old people but written by the old themselves.  I will try to create a list of recommendations and post it.  I would also recommend an article that appeared in 2015 in the NYTimes, “What Old Age is Really Like,” written by a young author trying to write about old people, and to whom I owe the credit for steering me to the poetry of Jenny Joseph’s old age.  For a fairy tale of how we project and stereotype old age, try my story “Tale of Two Grannies.”

Last Things and Reverse Bucket Lists

“Last things” can be hard to talk about.  We formulate bucket lists of fun and daring things we want to do before we die; generally, though, we assume those are one-time activities.  Just to see the Taj Mahal once, to feel what it is like to jump out of an airplane.  We assume the first time is the last time.  But what about the things we do all the time?  Will we even know when we are doing things for the last time? Most of us remember when we got a driver’s license and took a car out alone for the first time, but will we even know when we make that last trip at the steering wheel?  And surely, we have often had the death of a friend or loved one creep up on us unaware, and never realized that our last dinner with them was the “last” time we would see them.

Christianity says there are four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell.  We give the dying faithful last rites, and we recall the last supper. Taverns have a last call  – which Leonard Cohen used metaphorically in his wonderful “Closing Time.” 

Rarely do artists admit that they have completed their last works, but there have been some exceptions.  A .E. Housman had a great success in his thirties with A Shropshire Lad, then did not publish much until Last Poems in his sixties. The latter is not much read, and many of the poems in it are unpublished poems of his younger days.  But this is one of my favorites in this volume from his later years:

When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.

Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here’s the fair,
But where’s the lost young man?

– – To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long ’tis like to be.

This poem is a poem of endings, and our inability to make sense of it all.  Housman was forthright in the introduction to Last Poems; he was done.  Housman wrote:

I publish these poems, few though they are, because it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more. I can no longer expect to be revisited by the continuous excitement under which in the early months of 1895 I wrote the greater part of my first book, nor indeed could I well sustain it if it came; and it is best that what I have written should be printed while I am here to see it through the press and control its spelling and punctuation. 

No one wants to think about last things, but we might be happier if we did.  In fact, Housman did write one or two poems after he announced his retirement from the genre (he continued to work on his Latin scholarship).  Would it take the pressure off all of us if we admitted it was time for some “last” things – not in a pessimistic sort of way, but in a “goodbye to all that” kind of way? I had a friend once who – being an ambitious type – was always being tempted into new projects in her retirement.  She put a sign across the top of her computer screen which said, “You’ve already done all of that!”

Harold Bloom compiled a wonderful collection of what he calls A Gathering of Last Poems (highly recommended).  Some have the tone of being final but are not really the last; others were written just days before the poet’s passing.  I especially relished his commentary on Auden’s Aubade.  And there is the “Last Poem” of F. T. Prince which tells us that standing at the grave of “any common man or woman,” their “life becomes a poem.”  Yes.

Ah, but…  Yeats last poem was called “Politics,” but it was about anything but politics and about anything but acceptance and reconciliation with age:

How can I, that girl standing there,

My attention fix

On Roman or on Russian

Or on Spanish politics,

Yet here’s a travelled man that knows

What he talks about,

And there’s a politician

That has both read and thought,

And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war’s alarms,

But O that I were young again

And held her in my arms.

One last thought.  I recently read the advice (in What Matters Most by Jim Manney) that we should compose a reverse bucket list – a list of all the things we can jettison from our lives, that we can resolve to have done for the last time.  This makes perfect sense to me.  Old age should be a stripping down.

I’ve written on this subject before (see the post, “A Diminished Thing”) and have posted one short story that captures an attempt to do this, “Nothing New.”  What, in your life, have you done for the last time?  What are you willing to say good-bye to before it is wrested from your arms?

Air Travel During Covid and Mount Pisgah

We recently took our first flight since the pandemic started.  Not a good idea.  We are still sitting out a self-imposed quarantine period so we don’t inflict our recklessness upon the neighbors.  The trip left me with great compassion for the workers who have no choice – flight attendants, security workers, people who must travel for business.  Never a casual air passenger, this time I worried not at all about strange engine noises, but panicked as the man behind me kept clearing his throat.   I see no way they can make air travel safe.  We did what we could (practically pickling ourselves in hand sanitizer and hiding behind scarves and masks); it will be a few days before we know if it was enough.  The incubation period of Covid ends for us on Election Day.  An uneasy time in many ways.

It was not a completely abysmal experience, though.  We had not flown in a long time; I was newly awed by the view from on high.  From my window seat, I could see the contours of land brought into geometric definition by the hand of man.  I could see cars like rolling BBs and houses like sprinkled confetti among the autumn foliage.  I could see the top sides of the clouds and imagine the rain that was falling away from us rather than on us.  It gave me the long view; I thought about Moses.

We live on the edge of Pisgah National Forest, which contains Mount Pisgah.  The forest and the mountain were named for the mountain in the Bible from which Moses saw the promised land:

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.

Moses sees the promised land but will never get there.  But seeing it seems to be enough; knowing that his people will thrive in the land of milk and honey presumably gives him solace.

Martin Luther King referenced the same Bible story in his “I Have a Dream” speech:

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live – a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.

These two speeches assume that while the speaker may not be around to see how things turn out, things will definitely be OK, that times on the other side of the mountain will surely be better.  We old folks are always trying to look over the top of the mountain to see what things will be like for our children and grandchildren.  For the times we will never live to see.  But what if what is on the other side of the mountain is not better; what if it is worse?  What if the view from the mountaintop fills us with fear rather than inspiration?  This is not just about politics (although that is heavy on my mind these days), but about climate change and environmental degradation, about the lack of economic opportunities for younger people, about the stranglehold of technology on the lives of us all.  I have high hopes for my grandchildren as individuals, but I tremble for the world they will live in.  Do I want to live to see that world?

One of my heroes, Leonard Cohen, died the day before the U.S. election in 2016.  Go back and listen to “Democracy.”  I remember thinking that I was glad he did not live to see America delivered to isolationism, fear, and studied ignorance of both the scientific and the moral.  I am eager to see what happens next in the world; to resume life after the enforced quiet of the pandemic.  But do I really want to see what is on the other side of the mountain?  Can I really believe the long view is better?  Much hinges on this election – including the view from the mountain.  Moses was reassured by God; Martin Luther King was inspired by the progress already made.  I want to be reassured and inspired.  I want the view to be comforting.  I want to end my life believing that things are getting better. 

My husband and I climbed Mount Pisgah a few times after we moved to North Carolina five years ago.  I must admit that the wooded slopes of the milder climate here do not give the panoramic views we used to get from the bald tops of New England favorites like Mount Monadnock.  And I am getting older.  The last time we reached the peak of Pisgah, I realized that although I can go long distances on gentler slopes, the scramble up is getting too much for me.  So I am probably never going to see that view again.

And I will probably not see the Promised Land.   When I was young, it looked like things were getting better.  Civil rights were being granted, women were welcome in more places and professions than ever before, the rivers were actually getting cleaner.  I came into this life on a hopeful note.  I pray that I can go out that way.

This week’s fiction, “Going Down is the Most Dangerous Part,” takes place on Mount Monadnock.  Enjoy.

What Are the Old To Do?

The current political situation in the United States leaves many older Americans (but certainly not all – the majority of people over 50 voted for Trump)  in a quandary about what to do. I have thought about this carefully and there are a few points I would like to consider.

In many cases, old people have little to lose. We are often on fixed pensions of one type or another, we don’t have a job to take leave from if we go out to protest, we needn’t fear reprisals from colleagues. We have Social Security and Medicare (at least for now). On the other hand, we are not as vigorous as we once were and long marches start us thinking about where the restroom will be and whether we can go the distance. But, while we may not have physical strength, we do have bodies to put in the way and, perhaps, a certain sentimental public relations value in such matters. (What cop wants to be photographed grappling with a white-haired old lady?)

We are tired and also a little resentful. Where are the young people? I know some of them are out there, but I do not see the passion or the numbers I remember.  (And, yes, I realize my memory is not perfect and getting worse.) When we were young we were out in the thousands protesting against the Viet Nam war, for Civil Rights, for the ERA. Shouldn’t the banner be picked up by those coming along behind us who have the most to lose, since they will have to live longer with the results? Are we more upset than the younger people because they think it’s just a phase they’ll live through, and we fear it may be a phase we will never see the other side of?

And yet we must do something. I keep chanting to myself: We cannot leave with things in this state. Like the dying person who puts her household in order so her children won’t have to deal with the muddle, I cannot imagine retiring, dying, from a world that is in such a … mess.

I envy Simeon, the old man in the New Testament, who was ready to die once he saw the child Jesus and was convinced that everything was going to be fine. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” Simeon was a fortunate man. I think of Leonard Cohen, who died the day before Trump was elected; when I heard the news of his passing I remember being grateful he never had to face the next day’s revelation. But I also I think of Sigmund Freud, who escaped Austria for England in 1938. Before he left Austria, he said, “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books.” He was wrong; there was no progress. If he had stayed, they might well have burned him also. Freud died in 1939 while things were surely looking disastrous, but without learning the full extent of the horror. But how hard is it to leave the world in decline, perhaps worse than you found it? Think of the old folks who died in Hitler’s concentration camps long before the Allies pushed through.

Many of our parents and grandparents emigrated to this country for a better life for their children and grandchildren – and those children mostly had a far better life. Those immigrant parents saw their children graduate from school, get jobs, buy houses, do better than their forebears. I find myself grieving for the future of my grandchildren. I mourn for their rights, their environment, their humanity, for civility and justice. And for the immigrant parents at the border whose children may never have a chance for that better life.

So, what to do? Postcards, phone calls, donations to ACLU, Planned Parenthood, good candidates? Local rallies, posts on Facebook, family arguments? Remain polite and civil in the face of the crude, the impolite, the uncivil, the unfair? Please feel free to post your ideas here.

This week’s story (“Ritual“) is about the power of ritual to get us through. Like little children, old people know about the utility of ritual to comfort and soothe. But, we (perhaps) should be thinking a little harder about how to break out of it.  And do something.