TO BE OLD
Almost as if persistence of vision could last a few decades, I keep seeing an old man, his head between his callous hands, his elbows on an ancient marble table, his eyes closed. And I hear myself saying “ Grandpa, what’s the matter? Is there something wrong ?...."
And he wouldn’t answer, his eyes would remain closed and his head would just move slightly, as in disbelief. A clock he had bought in his youth was still noisily dissecting the seconds, in the silence of the house where he had been living for the past sixty years.
Dissolve to today.
I walk down the street in the metropolis, I am slightly depressed, thinking how much my “disconnect” with the so-called “reality” restlessly grows on me every day.
I am not old yet, but my understanding, my resistance and my patience have been declining very significantly lately.
My mind processing capabilities are probably already obsolete. I just enjoy, like and desire less and less of what I see and what I hear around me.
At the same time I find myself incapable of strategizing alternative lifestyles, alternative choices, more benign geographies, escape routes, like I used to be able to do until a few years ago.
Where do I go from here? I truly don’t know.
And I am positively sure that my problem is not (only)just due to dysfunctional brain dopamine and depression prone genes but it is indeed due to the march of time.
An old person can easily find he or she is as a true stranger in the present tense.
Perhaps that’s why old people tend to re-live their past experiences so much.
The present often becomes a painful and constant reiteration of your incapability to adapt, to comprehend, to accept, to enjoy. And the present is also increasingly stating your un-usefulness, your lack of elasticity, the increasing burden to society you represent.
In a society where there is no respect nor pity for the young, there is even less for the old.
