Tag: one art

Analogue Aging in a Digital World

Moving requires vast amounts of bureaucratic interaction – something to be avoided in the best of times, and my age keeps reminding me that this is perhaps not the best of times for such activities.  I can testify to the fact that getting anything done – from making a medical appointment to changing addresses – is harder than it used to be.  It is almost impossible to get a live person on the telephone; the days of hitting 0 for help are gone.  And if your needs or problems require anything but a “yes or no” answer, you are out of luck.  We have moved completely from an analogue to a digital world.  And now we are moving to AI, which is predicated on the on/off, yes/no assumptions of a digital world.

Before we talk about AI, think about the differences between an analogue and digital world.  Think about analogue as a wave, keeping all its nuances; digital is a series of pictures on that wave taking snapshots of what is happening so that you end up with a series of on and off points, or 0110110101.   Computers (and therefore AI) want everything to be digital.  They do not want to hear your story about why you need to have special bloodwork done before you see a doctor or why you can’t wait fourteen months to see a dermatologist.  They don’t want to know that you have already been on hold for an hour, only to find out you are in the wrong department and maybe need more help than just being returned to the main menu.  Life is not a multiple-choice test; there is no way to so neatly describe my needs and problems.  I wish there were, but I am old enough to know that life is never such.

Yet, we are being forced to deal with things as though it were.  Here is a minor example.  AAA (American Automobile Association) is divided into regions, each with its own administrative offices and billing (as far as I can tell).  I moved from one region to another.  After hours on the phone with no button to push for the exact action that I wanted to take, I finally scored with a live being.  She took all the information and said I would be getting a confirming email with a temporary card I could print out.  Much thanks on my part, only to find out that the email never came, and the Massachusetts AAA’s digital portal never heard of me.  I finally decided it would be easier to let my original membership expire and start from scratch.  That’s fine for AAA, but not for doctors, dentists, pharmacies and the entire structure that supports my old bones.  There is no starting from scratch as my prescriptions are running out, my bones are due for their semi-annual injection, and there is a funny spot on my ankle.  Digital systems do not want to know these things.  It is even true of travel; we still use old-fashioned paper maps that show you the whole region – towns, lakes, context.  GPS just wants to give you directions, one digital step at a time.

I suspect that the mechanisms which are being implemented facilitate the full expansion of AI.  The database must be prepared.  We must all be numerically defined and labeled; our problems must fit within a set of algorithms and an array of specific multiple choices.  The answers must be exact and quantifiable.  Old age is not like that.  Life is not like that.  And, if AI is incompatible with life, I know which one is winning.

So much for an old lady whining about the problems of moving.  I am getting through it, but it is teaching me lessons.  I was used to my old shower and kitchen and route to the grocery store.  I am learning new ways, but I am doing it in an analogue way.  Although I do not use GPS, I am even learning new routes, even shortcuts, and starting to remember names (of streets and people).  It is a gradual and imprecise process.  It is up and down – wave-like.  Definitely analogue.

I admit that some things adapt to being digital – date of birth (but not how old you feel), Medicare number (but not how your body is feeling), phone number (but not the explanation of how your husband does not use text so please leave a voice message instead), and so it goes.  We all might like our lives to be tidily swept up into categories, but it is not so.

And while I am at it, let me complain a little about the health care systems (or lack of such) in this country.  One realizes it while trying to transfer medical records – some offices will only take fax transmissions (really), while other offices will only send digital files (really).  No matter how many consent forms you submit to get files sent, the form will be lost.  Apparently, there is no slot in the digital program for them.  So, you will sign more forms.  Pharmacies will transfer some prescriptions, but not all.   A major healthcare system in our new area has no slots with primary care doctors, and other medical offices are booking into the new year.  I am not helpless; But it is hard.

Elizabeth Bishop wrote a delicious and ironic poem called “One Art.”  In many ways it is about aging; here are a couple of stanzas:

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster                                                                 of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.                                                                        The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:                                                                places, and names, and where it was you meant                                                             to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

All of us know about this kind of losing.  We lose things, we forget things, things change.  Moving is loss.  I will persevere.  New systems will digitize me, schedule my lab tests, order my pills and AAA card – eventually.  But, in the meantime, it feels like a disaster, and I do not think that the predicted danger of AI is far away.  We are already being manipulated by machines that give us no choice.  And every time we maneuver through phone trees looking for the right digital responses, we lose something.  We lose the space between the analogue waves of our existence, we lose the subtle differences in our lives, we lose our ability to communicate with other human beings, and I resent it.  And we old folks remember when it was otherwise.

Amnesty for Amnesia

We have all been deeply schooled in the value of “letting go.”  My Centering Prayer group talks often about “letting go and letting God.”  “Consider the lilies,” says Jesus in answer to two questions about anxiety: “… which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?”  OK, right. “Letting go” is also a pervasive theme in Buddhist meditative practice; I cannot tell you how many dharma talks I have heard on the necessity of letting be and letting go.  “If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace,” says Ajahn Chah, and I believe him.  The problem is that I still have not been able to let go the of big things, while I am “letting go” of little things constantly.  And I don’t like it.

I let go of small things all the time – mostly names, but sometimes words.  I also let go of objects (reading glasses) or the reason why I walked into the kitchen. The most strange and aggravating thing about these little “forgettings,” these “senior moments,” is that I know the word or answer is buried somewhere in the folds of my grey matter, from whence it eventually surfaces – long after the moment when I need it.  Sometimes it teases me – I can remember that the name starts with an “S” (Sara?  Sally?) but still cannot produce the correct name when we meet up in the grocery store.  It is like when you wake up at the tail end of a dream – you try to grasp it but… it’s gone.  And then, while you are brushing your teeth and not standing in front of a woman trying to remember her name, the answer floats back into your consciousness.  “Stacy,” you say to yourself, “that woman’s name is Stacy.  Where was that name when I needed it?”  Where indeed?

These are small lapses, but it is not an inconsequential matter to me.  My mother spent her last years in a nasty sort of dementia, so every time my brain fumbles, I start to hyperventilate.

It bothered Elizabeth Bishop too, but she turned her lapses into the wonderful poem, “One Art“:

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

Losing things is an art; it’s going to happen, so we might as well get better at it, “accept the fluster.”  Bishop’s poem is bittersweet, pairing the need for acceptance with the letting go of keys, names, places, and the grief over things that are permanently gone.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Philip Larkin seems to take the letting go of memory as a blessing; the past is what gets in the way of future happiness.  Funny and cynical, in “The Winter Palace” he longs for the peace of an empty mind:

And [I] am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

Billy Collins at least has a sense of humor about it:

It is as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones. (from “Forgetfulness”)

Amnesia and amnesty both come from the Greek word amnestia – meaning oblivion, or forgetting.  Amnesia means “complete or partial memory loss” and amnesty means “a general pardon for offenses.”  Now, it is somewhat paradoxical that I have been working hard at “letting go” for years, and yet – when my brain is ready to part with something, albeit something as trivial as where I hid the extra key, I panic.  Silly.  And, I have been assured that these minor memory lapses are rarely a prelude to true dementia (from the Latin dementia, meaning “out of one’s mind”), which is defined as a condition characterized by progressive, persistent, severe impairment of intellectual capacity. Some self-amnesty for amnesia is in order. Clearly, I need to pair Bishop’s advice about learning the art of losing (“it isn’t hard to master”) with Larkin’s assurance that the less cluttered my mind is, the better.  And add a dash of Collins’ humor.  I just wish I could choose what my mind lets go of.  There’s some stuff I would really like to get rid of, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

I have written several other blogs on letting go and memory – if you are interested in the topic you might try “Whispered Words of Wisdom” or “Dementia, Creativity, and Forgetfulness.”