reflections on an opaque mirror

[flaviomatani]

I keep thinking I'm 25. This is an error. I keep thinking that perhaps because I live pretty much the same life I was living then. But that was nearly forty years ago. I don't normally have to think about it that much -I go to parties and do all those things that some of my younger friends no longer do because they're too old for them at age thirty or thirty-five. I do find, however, that after two or three hours at those clubs I've had enough. I wonder whether this increases and you get to a point where at five minutes you've had enough and wish you were home, drinking cocoa and watching soaps or whatever it is that people my age do.

I keep thinking I'm 25, which is an error. I fall in love with a 27 year old woman -again, an error. Cannot happen. It might be even worse if it did (as it unfeasibly has, at some point) happen. Takes me a couple of years to get rid of the blues resulting from that, the 'guayabo'. I fall down with a flu and instead of two days it knocks me down for a couple of weeks and leaves me with a cough, a deadly tiredness and a feeling of end-of-the-world-approaching that last for weeks and weeks. The doctor at the surgery wiggles her finger up and down in admonition. Your blood pressure is a little high ('but it is within normal range', I protest), you should quit coffee (really?), salami (oh, ok) and cheese (Cheese?!? You mean, life without mozzarella or good parmiggiano?). People address you as 'sir'. Worse, your friends address you as 'sir'. Some people seem to expect sensible answers, advice, even. Unlikely -I've managed to learn very little and I haven't lived most of the things that make up adult life -the having children and family, etc. I see people my age around and can't help but see them as reactionary Daily Mail brexiters, supporters of all the meanness and small-mindedness that seems to be taking centre stage in the world once more. And, alas, they often are.

I keep thinking I'm 25 but then I look in the mirror in the morning and see this stranger that looks nothing like my self-image of me. Not that I have a great image of myself, just this clumsy spotty-face long-haired kid from the barrios in Caracas -but even if that is my true self it is possible that it lay buried under many layers of later lives.

Do I miss all the adult lives I never lived? No, not really. Not a bit. We all just make the best of the cards we're dealt. And so do I.

Comments

[hairyears]

Yes, I keep thinking I'm 25, and participating in black belt gradings with 25-year-olds. This works surprisingly well: I've been doing it since I was forty and I got efficient at it over the last decade.

On a more serious note, I keep thinking my beloved spouse is 25; the age she was when we met. In fairness, we both have a sense of humour aged 9 and reprehensible: this works surprisingly well.

Ageing gracefully is, in part, about humour and openness to new experiences: and all too many of my school and university acquaintances were, by the age of 25, narrow-minded forty-something little-englanders from 1950.

[dancefloorlandmine]

Yep. Late 20s for me. Meanwhile, I shall endeavour to avoid addressing you as 'sir' (although I tend to opt for that as a more sophisticated alternative to my common 'dude'), and will not ask you for advice on topics other than photography and guitars. And if having children is the definition of being an adult, I'm happy to be here in whatever extended youth we're living in.

Also, quit cheese? Ewww.

[ninshubur.livejournal.com]

Beautifully written!

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

Thank you! and Happy B'day (as in Birthday, not the B* word!)

[chimera-s.livejournal.com]

Know the Feeling - I don't think of myself as a specific age, but certainly live a life somewhat younger than I am biologically. If anything I did things in reverse - I was alot more of a stay at home type 30 yrs ago than now. It's mainly the Health side that reminds me how old i am. The settling down, Mortgage/Children etc - all the compromises society requires of you when you get on that treadmill, we've never made, and that's what keeps us young.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same here -in my twenties I was too busy making up for having started studying music a little late (like 18 yo instead of 8) so I was busy practising 5 hours a day, etc.

I had a mortgage at some point, back in Caracas. That went very strange ways. Here, to get my tiny little studio I never managed to get a mortgage (it was 2009 and, in the words of the Man from Barclay's, I was a bit old, self employed, earned a little bit too little and, the clincher, my accountant was too good) so the bank gave me a humongous personal loan instead.

Is it time to get a Harley and ride down from NYC to LA? Or was I supposed to do that twenty years ago when I started getting past middle age? :D