Short Term
Why life? It provides the infinite variety.
Phases again, more about them. God, I have to write these insights down. Strong environments produce memories that become solid, like cement setting. When we review, years later, that formation becomes that period. And the subject formation is carried through to the present.
For example, a star from movies or other celebrity — Robert Redford, Marilyn Monroe, Geraldine Chaplin — are formations. In the present, they haven’t changed; we think of them as they were when formed. This is true until the point we see them on television with all the wrinkles and gray hair. Then the task is to retrieve that former image and somehow make it consistent with the new image. It’s a bit like the loving relationship between a husband and wife where each sees the other in an ageless, when-they-were-young state. No wrinkles or slowness of speech. The angular, ugliness of Anita Ekberg’s older face becomes more of a curiosity than a moment of reality, and we still see her as the goddess wading around the Trevi fountain in La Dolce Vita. It comes as a surprise when a Sophia Loren sits it an interview, only modestly changed from her glamor image in the 60’s.
These formations, forms, we associate with different periods of our lives.
So, here I am, at seventy-eight. I’ve changed. As late as ten years ago I would say that we become “old” when we see the forthcoming years pretty much as the present; that is, the idea of life-changing behavior has disappeared. It becomes a waiting time, like sitting in a bus station. And we realize the nature of youth and how it disappears into adulthood as experience replaces imagination.
Why do grandparents often bond so irrationally with their twice-removed offspring? Because we seek the possibility of life-changing behavior through the hopeful eyes of the child. I heard that for people of my age to avoid stepping into a death march we should surround ourselves with things we enjoyed when young — the music, the spontaneity, the nonsense. I’ve found this to be true. Those habits of my teen years and early twenties are welcome tools in my quest for a happiness that were once the way of my life. That was before the social media blitz, before the practicality of career and marriage.
But now, the latter restrictions, in this metaphorical and literal sense of my retirement, appear as a kind of story time. My life, in fact all lives, are a story. Looking back, flashing on the formations, is a gathering of chapters, each with its own character. And each with its own seriousness. God, so serious. Why? Because each chapter was predicated on the contemporary notion that we had a handle on our futures. And it seemed so important that whatever plan was current had to be followed to fulfillment. The alternative? Failure.
Then there’s the issue of “me.” Of course, I’m writing this. It sounds like the student’s wading into an essay with “in my opinion” or “what I think about the topic is.” No, I’m referring to the ego me, at least the me that comes across to other people. You see, I’m not very likeable. Oh, I get along with them. I’m generally non-confrontational, careful not to offend or make people in any way feel threatened. Would I like someone else to come across that way to me? Of course not, so it becomes a personality trait resulting in, “Mike, yeah, he’s a nice guy.” But substance? Doubtful. That is, until others get to, in their considered judgment, know me.
It goes like this: approachability, established comfort zone, estimate of high intelligence, followed by a gradual decline in respect as they realize the following about me. I don’t get jokes, I’m inappropriately esoteric. My correct English is a cut above average, a feature that causes discomfort, a feature that leads to either their attempting to match my English skills, which grows old quickly or they peg me as a prude. You smoke pot? What! You’ve been in jail? No! At any rate, people are put off. Grab the old ladies and children and head for . . . wherever there is comfort.
But this doesn’t address the main issue, which is my conceit defined as 1) holding or characterized by an unduly high opinion of oneself; vain, 2) endowed with fancy or imagination, and without effort 3) entertaining a flattering opinion of one’s self. Me? really. Yeah, a lifetime of soured experiences proves it. That’s the outsider’s view. I see it differently. Enter the ego, perfectly described as “the self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves.” My God, the person who wrote that knows me. Others see this as a kind of vanity, putting myself above them, but it’s actually an attempt at bringing interpersonal relationships into a condition of individuality, an attitude precisely against the notion of comradery.
People want to belong. It’s how they function.
Introspection. Mortality
We go from things I do to things I’ve done.
Mortality — “That’s for the other guy.”
Exploration — Godard et.al. might be just for me, if I can handle the isolation, the non-interaction. Hell, there’s nobody to interact with, anyway. It seems like isolation is not just a phantom fear, but a reality, the nature of which I’ve been avoiding for years. I might die alone, and thus realize the true human condition. For myself. In a signal blast sending me into the nature of myself as not myself, but the fabric of the universe that has been too terrible to comprehend, too basic to believe. How could it all amount to this. And how beautiful this is. Sometimes I love me.
People act according to what they know and what they know is, by nature and formation, perception. These perceptions are based on the forms sitting in memory. The form can be a political form, a social behavior form, a star/movie/Hollywood form.
