Rage, Rage...

RAGE, RAGE...

Sick in New York City. Feeling quite icky--nasal congestion, back pain, cough, conjunctivities, and heels so sore I can hardly walk. All this right when there is nothing I would rather do, having just arrived, than charge out into the city and walk for miles, breathing it all in, taking countless photographs of all that interests and delights me.
.
Alas. Truth is, I saw a physician before arriving and have appropriate meds for virtually all of the above--AND, there are great football playoff games on the tube today and tomorrow, so I would probably just sit on my butt and watch TV for 6 to 8 hours each day even if I were the picture of health. Then there are all those family images from the Holidays to process here at the computer...

Still, I'm feeling old today. Not 'old' as in '60' (which I AM, yet which still feels younger than I ever thought it could) but 'old' as in 'infirm' or 'feeble' or 'unable to do the physical tasks I wish to perform.' Even though that greatly overstates the case, it's hard not to feel my life is travelling in that direction, even if it has yet to arrive at so dire a destination. So it's not just an accumulation of minor illnesses that is troubling today, nor the temporary frustration of not getting to do what I want (and I am very much a two year old when coping with frustration). Rather, it is the shadow of what the future may hold, when I get to a place where travel may no longer be possible or where various pleasures now in my life may no longer be accessible.
And it's the awareness that such a possibility is no longer in the vague, foggy future of far ahead, but within a few decades (if I'm lucky).

There is always the learnings from the arts, of impactful films and moving literature & poems to show that way in making sense of it all. And, I am blessed with having family members a generation (even two) ahead of me with whom I have just visited, and I have seen their quiet strength, their courage, their resiliance in coping with their lives as this function or that diminishes, this pain or that increases. I have yet to master their grace, but hope I can follow their example in blending courageous determination and action with effective acceptance of "what is."

For now I'll sit on the couch and watch the NFL, taking my medicines and preserving my resources. Inwardly, I'll greet the sunset with anger.
Dan

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