This is for Dannie and for Arnie.
I turned seventy four and took a break from my blog because I’d begun to think about what a sorry species humans are. It was a thought that had always occupied a comfortable chair in a quiet corner of my mind…but one day it just got up and started walking around inside my head like it owned the place. Terrorists, mass murderers, serial killers, shooters, looters, baby snatchers, drug barons, child abusers, master pimps, white slavers, black slavers, corrupters, venal medical men, haters, deniers, false prophets, criminal social workers, government assassins, drone hit men (and women), kidnappers, thieves, fiends, witches and demons and politicians of course, ordinary people who had lost their way…who never knew the way. All of it running around like naked freshmen across the pages of the media. I just couldn’t think straight anymore. Everything I sat down to write came out sounding like a frightened rabbit ranting about wolves. Everywhere I looked there were big fucking teeth and ugly little yellow green eyes. It was like I was back in the old drug days only it was all bad trip and no happy high.
O.K. maybe it wasn’t that bad but it was certainly bad enough that working on my blog was a dismal chore and it was never supposed to be, even though I enjoy a good rant. It’s one of the indulgences of my age. I know they say we’re getting fitter and less gaga…more mellow…but where’s the fun in that? You live this long, you want some reassurance that you’ve learned a thing or two…and you have to put it out there in growling contrast to the behaviour of younger self-righteous assholes who have seized the steering wheel and insist on driving us old folks to hell. Just the other day I read about an old couple who have been together for sixty years…and the government …in its wisdom, split them up and put them separate care homes miles apart, because one needed more “support” than the other. Now I suppose that the bureaucracy figured that after sixty years they both needed a break from each other. Idiots! After sixty years separation is amputation…they’re conjoined twins…and these assholes performed surgery with a rusty meat cleaver. Sixty years! How many years have they got left anyway…give them a tent or a travel trailer. How about we find the bureaucrat in charge and take off their right leg. What the hell…they’ve still got the left one right?
Sorry…I digress.
So I took the summer off and to be honest I wasn’t certain that I’d ever get back to blogging. I mean, what was the point. There was nothing sensible to be said about Hilary and Donald. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, watching the two of them on a large T.V. screen was like watching a rehearsal for a black mass. You know something bad is going to happen you just don’t know which one of them is going to be holding the ceremonial dagger.
Now autumn is just around the corner and after riding more than a thousand kilometers on my bike, wind in my hair, birds in the trees, sun in my eyes and bugs in my teeth…I’ve managed to coax the thought of our sorry species back to its chair in the corner. True, I think we are a little sorrier than we used to be but it ain’t like I need a long robe and a sign that says “The End Is Near”.
I’ve decided that I’m going to start again…and I’m thinking of writing a piece on how the older you get the less visible you become. You walk along the street and younger people just don’t see you anymore…until finally you reach an age when you can walk into a store and you’re like a fucking ghost…nobody knows you’re there…nobody asks if they can help you…You could rob a bank and just walk out with your stroller or walker or whatever they call those things and nobody would even set off the alarm. They wouldn’t know they were robbed until they counted the money at the end of the day.
Ageism they call it…and I’m its enemy.
Blues
September 11 2016
Chagal4's Blog 
September 11, 2016 at 6:15 pm |
Good lord that was cheery!! and ageism? can’t wait!