More Than Just a Number

When it comes to aging, many people like to say “Age is just a number,” by which they mean they’ve reached a certain number – say 60, 65, 70 – and they’re still healthy, fit, and strong and don’t want to be written off as old. I get that. Old is a dirty word in our youth-obsessed, youth-oriented culture.

If you’re 60 or older, have you noticed that most of what’s on TV (shows and commercials) and in movie theaters isn’t directed at you? Are you finding it difficult to find clothing that (a) fits and (b) doesn’t look ridiculous on you? Do you find yourself not understanding the social references made by young comedians? Is it harder to find music on the radio that you like? And if you’re not super-tech-savvy (or inclined to be) do you feel out of place in the new high-tech normal? Aging isn’t about numbers. It’s about how you feel in society – and how society feels about you.

In other cultures – not many – the aging and the old are revered: for their knowledge and wisdom; for the roles they’ve long played in society and their families; and because they represent the value of the past. That’s not how it works here, or in Western countries in general.

In the marketplace, you’re over-the-hill in your 40s. In your 50s and 60s you’re viewed as essentially worthless, and unless you have your own business you’re virtually unemployable. In your 70s and beyond, you’re resented because you get government “entitlements,” or are just regarded as a drain if you’re ill, at which point your loved ones (if you have any left) might warehouse and largely forget about you.

“Age is just a number,” both as an idea and as language, makes as much sense as “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Age is an important factor in our lives throughout our lives. As kids and teens we can’t wait to get older, because older means grown up and freedom. You can legally drive, vote, drink, have sex, and ignore your parents at assorted youthful milestone ages.

During our 20s, 30s & 40s, we feel we’re in our prime. After that, whether we’re in good shape or not, things begin to change. We reflect on our lives, careers, personal choices, finances, in a way we may never have before, because we know we likely have less time ahead of us than we do behind us, and there’s no way of knowing what condition we’ll be in as time marches on.

Circumstances and relationships change. People (family, friends, colleagues) relocate or die. There are friends we get rid of or who get rid of us. For lots of folks – especially women who were beautiful in their younger years – appearance becomes an issue. Teeth become troublesome, hair turns gray or falls out, gravity takes its toll on your whole body, joints hurt, your body may not tolerate the same foods.

The machine begins to show its wear and tear. And to lesser or greater extents, so does the mind. You remember less. You’re confused more often. Things just change – more for some, less for others, but change is a universal reality and that’s not about numbers, it’s how life works.

At the end of March I had a bad fall and I’m still more debilitated by it than I already was. Now I have one of those “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” medical alert devices – sensible, necessary, and I don’t really mind. But it doesn’t exactly represent vitality.

More importantly, one of my dearest, longtime friends, a man I knew for over 40 years, died last week at age 66. Too soon, too soon. He knew he was sick and was willing to fight. He never got to wage that battle. And I have a sad void within where a bright light used to be, the light of someone who loved me, who remembered my parents and my youth, who shared many of my values and opinions, who was generous and supportive. 

When we lose such people, we lose the witnesses to our lives. I don’t have that many witnesses left. No, age is not just a number, especially as we get older. Among other vital things, it’s time to assess/reassess who and what is important in our lives. Maybe there is some “human deadwood” we should shed. But it’s time to treasure everyone and everything we care about. Because it can all slip away in a New York minute.

Celebrating Maya Angelou

As I’m sure you already know, the magnificent Maya Angelou died this morning in her North Carolina home at the age of 86. While I certainly extend my sympathies to her family, friends, and the many members of the worldwide public who felt a strong even daily connection with her (she was on Facebook and was a frequent tweeter), I don’t feel a sense of loss as much as I feel a sense of celebration of and for her spirit. As a writer, she leaves behind a strong and sensitive body of work; and as a human being, teacher, and leader, she leaves behind such a courageous, proactive, and never-ending legacy, that I feel Dr. Angelou has a kind of immortality.

If Rosa Parks was the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Maya Angelou was it’s brave, bold daughter. After Bayard Rustin died, she took his place as the SCLC’s (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) New York Office Coordinator; that was the organization that Rustin and others had founded with Martin Luther King, Jr. She later worked with Malcolm X, helping him put together the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964. When Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 – the date of her 40^th birthday – she stopped celebrating her birthday for many years after. But before, during and after these significant events, hers was a booming voice and substantial presence in the movements for civil rights, women’s rights, and human rights. For the rest of her life, she lived and worked around the world as an organizer, administrator, teacher, speaker, writer, and the human embodiment of inspiration for millions of people, but most especially women.

For me personally, she entered my life with her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in the years after I’d been awakened and inspired by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kurt Vonnegut, and Allen Ginsberg, and, irritated by Nikki Giovanni and Ntozake Shange (I appreciated the politics of those women but their personalities and language left me cold). Maya Angelou’s prose was clean and had the imagery of poetry; her poetry was visionary and had the clarity of good, clean prose. She spoke like she wrote and wrote like she spoke, which to me is the totality of a born writer. Her spirit, her essence, was always with me, even when I didn’t know it. Which may be why I don’t feel a sense of loss now so much as a sense of celebration.

The other reason is that I’m a natural intuitive (clairsentient meaning clear knowing, as opposed to clairvoyant, meaning clear seeing), and for five years I also took psychic development classes with an amazing medium, the late Gene Sterling. A few weeks before Maya Angelou recited her great poem, On the Pulse of Morning, at Bill Clinton’s first Inaugural, I channeled an energy that gave me the first real sense of being a channel, because the following words certainly weren’t coming out of my consciousness (or attitude towards nature) as they fell out of my mouth: “The rocks have feet, the trees have feet, the rivers have feet.” I don’t remember the rest of the message, but I’ve never forgotten that line and the whole stunning experience.

So can you imagine how I felt on that January day when Maya Angelou began to recite On the Pulse of Morning and I heard her say: “A Rock, A River, A Tree.” I later bought the recording of that poem, for which she won a Grammy, and I still have it. Listening to her, and listening to that poem, convinced me like nothing else could, that ideas, messages, language, energy, are all around us all the time, and we can pick them up if we’re able to put our egos aside and listen. That’s why, in a way, I’ve long felt that Maya Angelou and I have been tuned into the same otherly frequency. She did much more and a whole lot better with it than I have. But it is in that spirit that I say to her this evening, “Thank you for everything, Dr. Angelou, for all you endured, all you did, all you said, and for just being here. Rest in peace and live well in spirit. I’m still listening.”

A Global Shame

The kidnapping of 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria happened three weeks ago. I’m glad the world is outraged now, but it took three weeks for American news media to pay any attention to this story. Fox News was busy obsessing about Obamacare and Benghazi, as usual; CNN was focused on every dim ping in the ocean in their can’t-let-this-story-go endless focus on the downed Malaysian jet; and MSNBC was still staring at the George Washington Bridge Over Political Waters, not to mention the political horse races of 2014 and 2016. I don’t know what broadcast network news was doing because I don’t watch them. But even the usually ahead-of-the-game PBS NewsHour let us down. In print…even the New York Times was asleep at the wheel.

Three hundred schoolgirls were kidnapped in Nigeria because a bunch of Islamist terrorist wackjobs don’t want girls to go to school – especially Western-style schools. They would rather sell them for $12.00 each, sending them off into the global child sex trafficking trade, or to individual men who want child brides, or someone, anyone, who wants free, hard labor. Only social media – primarily Facebook and Twitter – stopped sharing recipes and selfies long enough to sound an alarm loud enough for the news media and the public to hear. Good for them. Shame on us.

What happened to these 300 girls – yes, about 50 got away but more have been taken since – is a disgusting outrage. But it is part of a larger global shame that has been going on for years and has been shockingly under-reported, never mind addressed. Every year, a million children, mostly girls, literally from infancy to tweens, are trafficked worldwide, around 300,000 in the U.S. alone, primarily for the unimaginable misery of sex slavery, a lesser number for grueling manual labor. And these are just the stats on kids. The numbers for adult women are even more horrific, and men get roped into this travesty as well.

Throughout human history, human life has been regarded as pretty cheap in many quarters. But now we’re in the 21^st century, the bold progressive future, and it’s just as bad if not in some ways worse. Boko Haram may be a new name to us on the roster of terrorists who commit the unspeakable, but they’ve been around for years and our government, and the Nigerian government, and the governments of the world, have known about them – them and others, who pretend to act in the name of religion or culture or tradition or unashamedly in the name of greed run amok. Women, as always, are favorite targets, hardly regarded as human and certainly unentitled to autonomy or dignity. They’re fair game for brutality, especially sexual brutality, because men who are crazy are usually particularly crazy when it comes to women and sex.

And, not for nothing, another thing happened while world news ignored those Nigerian schoolgirls snatched from their beds. The wealthy, dapper, Sultan of Brunei decided that what his little oil-soaked country needed was the mania of Sharia Law, which has a special bug up its Islamist ass for women, gays, and anything resembling the rights of free speech or thought. Stone them! Mame them! It’s what Allah would want! Really?

Three hundred schoolgirls were kidnapped in Nigeria for the crime of being female and getting an education. Now, with international intervention, some of them may be rescued. But much damage will already have been done. The rest, the majority, will be forever lost in the anonymous swamp of child trafficking. Are we, the world, going to confront this issue now? I’m not optimistic. Just heartsick. And really, really pissed.

Contemplating Valentine’s Day

I think it’s fair to say that, generally speaking, men don’t like Valentine’s Day and women do. Men don’t like feeling pressured to be excessively romantic and having to express their emotions, not to mention spending money. Women like it when men are mushy, especially if they usually aren’t, and getting to hear a sometimes-rare “I Love You” is a thing of joy. And we like getting flowers and chocolate; gifts, period. I believe lesbians feel the same as straight women about Valentine's Day, but their relationships are usually more touchy-feely than straight relationships anyway. I can't speak for gay men.

The best Valentine’s present I ever got was a shipment of filet mignons from Omaha Steaks. It felt very sexy to be the kind of woman who inspired a gift of raw meat. His card was restrained, but since we had only been dating for six weeks when Valentine’s Day rolled around, I didn’t mind. I gave him a shirt – pedestrian, I know, but I couldn’t afford a gold cigarette case. My card to him was one with the photo above in which I wrote a correspondingly sexy message inside. Both of us were pleased.

Some people, men and women, straight and gay, reject Valentine’s Day because they view it as a Capitalist conspiracy among the greeting card, flower and candy industries (which, in the business of marketing, would be considered a clever “cross promotion”). I think that’s rather cynical and humorless, even if it’s become true. However, historically, Valentine’s Day dates back to Ancient Rome, 270CE, when an imprisoned priest was martyred by Emperor Claudius II for falling in love with his jailer’s daughter and sending her a letter signed “from your Valentine.” Priests weren't celibate yet, but those old Romans didn't like Christians, so he couldn't win for losing either way.

What is now an annual holiday is also connected to a Roman spring fertility festival and evolved into a Day of Romance by the 14^th Century. Printed Valentine cards made their U.S. debut in the mid-1800s and traditional gifts were already chocolate and flowers, particularly red roses: the Roman symbol of love and beauty. The Valentine’s Day tradition endured and is celebrated in the US, England, Canada, France, Mexico and Australia, among other countries.

Like many women, I enjoy Valentine’s Day when I have a man in my life and don’t when I don’t. I don’t this year, but I’m not feeling bummed out. This country is in such a state of turmoil, division, anger, want, greed, and need (I really think America is having a nervous breakdown) that I welcome anything pleasant and that celebrates love when hate is going around like the flu.

I painfully miss affection and believe the lack of it is truly unhealthy. There was a study many years ago that separated a bunch of babies in an orphanage or hospital or some such into two groups. One group got a lot of holding, fondling, kissing, cuddling, etc. and the other group got none. The untouched group constantly cried and fussed, ate and slept poorly, and were just cranky little miserables all the time. The coddled group was the complete opposite. I don’t think this changes as we grow up, especially when we mature into sexual beings, as well.

And some kind of love and affection is, I believe, markedly important for the aging and elderly. I wouldn’t be surprised if some future study discovered a connection between a lack of affection and the development of severe depression and even Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. I don’t think it takes scientific genius to figure out that when people aren’t touched for extended periods, they literally lose their minds; affection is as basic a need as food, water, clothing, and shelter.

So, this Valentine’s Day, I’m thinking lovely thoughts. I’m remembering how lucky I was to have had a very loving, affectionate mother, and, how sweet it was when I had certain men in my life (others provided the emotional sustenance of a rock). I’m remembering my half-aunt Mildred (long story…) who, after many years of being widowed, had the courage to marry a second time at the age of 66 (and the even greater courage to divorce him at 76). 

I’m happy for everyone I know – and even those I don’t – who are fortunate to have a Valentine, and I wish all of you a happy, loving Valentine's Day. For those of you who don't have a significant other but want one, I hope you find one soon. And because I haven’t given up hope, I’m thinking positively and looking forward to my own next one. This fat lady ain’t singin’ yet.

On Losing the Strangers We Love

I was upset when Pete Seeger died last week because of what he had meant to me since childhood.  But his death was not a tragedy.  He was 94 and died of natural causes after a creative, productive, meaningful life.  But I am very sad and very angry about the death of 46-year-old Philip Seymour Hoffman – a stupendous actor and by all accounts a very sweet and decent man.  He was one of my favorites and his death is a tragedy, because he should have had at least another 30 years to work his craft on screen and stage, not to mention being a loving father, son and spouse.  Forty-six is just too fucking young to die.

I feel like my head is stuffed with ants and cotton balls, but I need to communicate several ideas here.  The first is that, of course, all of us must find a way to cope with the deaths of those we know and love; the second is that the deaths of public figures we never knew personally can sometimes be as wrenching as the deaths of family and friends; and the third is that some people are callous and judgmental when someone dies because of drugs, which pisses me off, because they have no understanding that addiction is a disease and it plays out in a confusing assortment of genetic and other physiological, emotional and behavioral ways (and that’s all I’ll say about that).

All of my blood relatives are dead, as are several people who were former lovers or close friends (or both).  A dear friend of over 30 years died last August and I was sad.  But she was 99, so it was also manageable and acceptable, if you know what I mean – in a way that the death of another close friend of over 20 years who died of AIDS at 40 was not.  I was extremely close to my mother and it took literally 17 years before I had fully coped with her death and integrated that loss into my life.  When my father died, I grieved for him too, especially because we hadn’t had a good relationship until I was in my 30s and I felt cheated out of an ever-increasing closeness that was suddenly ended.  But his passing just didn’t tear my guts out the way my mother’s did.  Death and grief, like life and love, have broad scope and many levels.

One of the things I’m keenly aware of is that the assassinations of President Kennedy (when I was 11) and Martin Luther King Jr. (when I was 16) genuinely shaped my life, gave me a view of the world as an unsafe and unjust place.  Years later, the murder of John Lennon drove me over the edge.  It reinforced my cynicism, existentialism and warped sense of humor.  I mourned him actively for more than a year and in many ways still do – just as I still mourn King.  Do we ever fully recover when a uniquely bright light goes out?  I’m an habitual obituary reader, and whenever the death of a favorite writer or artist or other public figure is announced, it takes a piece out of me – especially if they were fairly young or committed suicide.  If they couldn’t go on, with all their gifts and glory, how can I be expected to keep going?  But I have to nonetheless.

I’ve heard it said that when we loose the ones we love – the ones we know and who know us – we lose the witnesses to our lives.  I feel that when we lose the ones we love whom we don’t know, we lose a part of the structure and meaning of our lives, those who inspire in us respect, admiration, affection, and a desire to be our best selves.  You would think their passing might give us something solid to hold on to, the stability of memory.  But more often, at least for me, the loss just lessens.

It has always given me great pleasure and comfort just to know that I’m living in the same time as strangers I love, and living in New York City, I’m often living in the same place.  New York will be a little more empty without Philip Seymour Hoffman – and those of us who loved him without knowing him will just have to live with that.