Tinny Tussle

Is it just me, or are people speaking faster?
Sometimes I feel like my ears are full of plaster.
When I watch TV they all seem to be, like, twenty,
And their lips do move, but the background noise is plenty.

Are they making sense, is there anything they're saying
That I ought to hear? What's that awful music playing?
And that high-pitched whine, what's it doing in my ears?
It is always there, but grows louder with the years.

Now I'm getting mail from the Beltone Corporation
For those free coupons for an head examination.
I guess they heard that I require some augmentation
If I wish to hear my neighbor's conversation.

But I don't blame drums for my hearing aberration,
Or my lack of skill in interpreting vibration
Or the gap that forms between each generation
Or some nasty gene that has caused deterioration.

No, indeed, I say, there's a simpler explanation.
It is mere old age that diverts my concentration
For when I was young, life was rife with aspiration,
And the aim of mine was to get an education.

But that stage is past, as the Bard so aptly penned;
I no longer sway to the beat of every trend.
Existential thoughts now well up in my head
And drown out things that other folks have said.

Mess-merized.

As you get older, does time seem to move faster for you or slower? If, like me, you are still working for a living, chances are it seems to move faster. There are not enough hours in the day, days in the week, weeks in the month nor months in the year to accommodate all that you have/would like to do. When you were younger, you had time to waste. Now, wasting time seems like a waste of time.

But then again, perhaps it is really a simple matter of being disorganized. It's not that I forget to write things down that I need to do. It's more that I forget to look at the list. Or maybe that I forget where I left the list. Or maybe I can't find my glasses to read the list.

Millions of philosophical nuggets have been authored over the years on this business of time and energy and work. Most of it falls into the Get Organized school of thought, which seems to suggest that if only you get into the habit of thinking ahead, you'll be successful. Hang up the clothes you'll need for tomorrow where you can easily get at them. Make your lunches for next week on Sunday evening, and freeze the ones for Tuesday through Friday. Keep a list of the foods you have in your freezer by date so nothing will go past its best by date. Set aside a specific time to do laundry, to vacuum, to do the dishes, to read, to meditate, to pick your nose....

The wonder of it all is, it works for some, and not for others. By the time I've read the self-help stuff on getting organized, there's no time left to get organized: another week is upon me.

Complicating all of this confusion is the environment of living in a house of three generations. I swore I would avoid this eventuality at any cost, but the Robert Frost's Law of Returning Offspring ('Home is the place where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in') has resulted in a kind of compound interest effect when it comes to disorganization.

Although I was brought up in a house that was probably less than 800 square feet on the ground floor, I now believe that children cannot be raised in any house that is less than 2000 sq. ft. in floor space. Why is this? Because of the proliferation of plastic. We live in a polymer paradise. For every phase of childhood, there is now something made out of plastic or encased in plastic that is vital to their well-being; something without which the young person will inevitably be unable to achieve a wholesome adulthood. And the best of these creations, such as play saucers and cribs and storybooks, will turn out to have been the ones that required alkaline 9-volt batteries for their operation.

Part of the function of these devices and the flotsam and jetsam that bobs in their wake is to slow me down, to make my progress more arduous. A simple walk to the door in the morning typically requires navigation through the treacherous shoals of multi-geometric shapes which fit inside some sort of octahedron that is not currently in the same room. It has not, in fact, been seen in this room for some time. These plastic triangles, rectangles, stars and squares have cleverly-designed thin edges that are guaranteed to immobilize any unsuspecting instep for at least several minutes.

In a similar vein, the closet doors are often wedged open by shoes belonging behind the opposite door. Because they have stepped out into the pathway and taken up a position, the range of movement of the door to my side of the closet is severely limited.

There can be only one karmic reason for this mode of living. I am meant to slow down. It's time to set my eyes toward the earth, to be more grounded, to notice what is around me for the sake of my own well-being. I cannot forever be rushing forward in hot, heedless pursuit of what captivates me at the moment. The time to achieve goals is past. The time to take note of where I am and what I am doing is upon me.

I need no more self-help than a good pair of glasses. Now where the hell did I leave them?

Cud-chewing

You know, one of the neat things about cows is that they have four stomachs. I just came back from a Mexican restaurant here in Greater Cincinnati and let me tell you folks, I can see a great disadvantage in the way we're designed. I ate enough for three. Three enchiladas and a 22-ounce draft... Thin people aren't built for that kind of intake. It was good, and it got me to thinking.

I don't know, not being a farmer, whether cows can overeat or not. They certainly turn digestion into a cottage industry. At some point, they regurgitate the grass, hay and whatever else they've ingested, and that's when you'll find them contentedly grinding that initial load, usually for a considerable time, until with a final gulp or two, they send it on its way to the other three. And we all know how that comes out.

I was teaching a class today of seniors using computers, and the subject of email abuse came up (e.g. forwarding dumb jokes to people and thereby displaying their addresses to everyone else, rather than using the BCC to maintain their privacy). That led to the mention of failure to attach items (like pictures) that you've stated are attached. So I suggested that the simplest way to prevent that is not to address your email until you've written, checked and attached.

Email is the symptom of a culture that has no time to ruminate.

Sure, it's efficient, and sometimes effective, but somehow the bulk of it is just that. Bulk. No time to chew on what we've written: little time to digest what's been read. Hit reply all and you're done. Move along... nothing to see here.

Consider the cows of the field. They eat, they repeat, they digest. Those big eyes follow the farmer as he, their slave, cleans up after them, feeds them, milks them, breeds them, and ships them off to their fate which they most likely don't give much thought to, unless one of them dies in a field, or they lose a calf.

Are cows the philosophers of the phields?

And so, following along these lines, I decided to waste some electrons on some of my own stomach rumblings, if only to compel myself to sit down and consider timeless questions, such as, "Is this the good life, and am I living it?" Or maybe some more trivial pursuits, such as "Why am I still working at 65 when all the successful people are floating around the Bahamas, some of them in boats?" I realize that blogging is injurious to your health. It eats time that you could have spent walking.

It is in the nature of blogs that you start out all a-quiver with creative juices gushing, and after not too long, it melds from a Serious Beginning through a Daily Obligation and finally becomes Orphaned File. Well, fine. Everything has a beginning and to everything there is a season. Or, as my dad used to say, "Your grandfather never criticized anyone, but if he did say something sharp about someone, he'd end with, 'There! I've said it, and I'm glad'".

And so, when this blog has no more cud to chew, I'll have said it. I hope I'll be glad. And I hope you will be too.