"No matter how open my mind is, or what I let into it, I still land in a familiar place..................I mean, I can learn new things and integrate new ideas and enjoy new things but that doesn't mean I return to them. They have some effect, they inform my ongoing intellectual narrative, but it's sort of amazing what's dug in, wired.........................I know there's a whole world out there and I do take it in. Despite that I somehow land back in myself."
Marc Maron is my twin.
"I've always been aware of most of the similarities but there's poetry to the expressions of a senile mind. It's concise and to the point."
That is a beautiful and heart-aching sentence. That's Marc talking about his Dad, who is dealing with dementia. The similarities he's talking about are the traits he and his Dad share.
"I also talked to an old friend who I grew up with. We are around the same age and both hyper-aware of where we are in our lives. We were able to reflect on it a bit but also express the surprise of it in a way. We both knew it was coming but now it's here and who are we now. It's kind of mind-blowing. It didn't happen all of a sudden but somehow it feels like it snuck up on us slowly and pounced."
I feel the same way. Strangely, I am not afraid of being 70. Leading up to it, I was in a bit of a panic, but now that it's here there is a strange calm about me. But it definitely pounced. I cannot believe I am 70.
"Time is racing by. It seems to go faster when you get older. I'm not complaining. I'm just trying to get a sense of what's real, what's fantasy and what's delusion in relation to who I think I am. Getting right-sized is what they call it in the recovery racket."
Getting right-sized. I like the sound of that. Negotiating the confusion between real, fantasy, and delusion takes up a lot of my time. I often experience the wrong perspective at the wrong time.
"I'm trying to make decisons about what I want to do and who I want to be as an old man. Definitive choices. What do I want as a life and an environment? What do I even really like to do? It's strange how the brain, at least my brain, doesn't know the difference between practicality and desire and ridiculous fantasy..................................I don't have time for fantasies that ruin my brain into believing they are possibilities. I need a self-induced ego contraction. The humbling is coming for all of us. I should get a jump on it."
I am already 70. Who will I be at 80? I suspect I will be only a shadow of my former self. If I am even alive. The humbling hits me on two levels. On one level I interpret it as the falling away of self-delusion into the humble truth of who I really am. Could be comforting. Could be horrifying. On another level I interpret it as death.
Here's hoping humble truth comes first.
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