the rags of age

yesterday was a day of chores.  today too was a day of chores.  but one of the things we needed to do yesterday was get our hair cuts.  nick, and my, hair grows pretty fast.  i tend to wait longer than nick.  i've always liked to grow my hair into long flowing locks.  instead, my hair grows into a puff ball.  maybe it's because i'm chinese.  not really, but last year a lovely older chinese woman cut my hair.  she told me my hair is rather thick and course.  perhaps you are chinese, she said.  perhaps in another life, i replied.

but hair is just a small part of our being.  my hair is thinning too.  when it gets wet, or when i use hair product, you can see my scalp!  even more, when the young woman cutting my hair was fastidiously doing her job my gaze would fall to the floor.  i wasn't wearing my glasses.  so i couldn't see myself in the mirror very well.  just a blurred face.  i could look at the hairs falling from my head to the floor.  those hairs were nearly all white!  okay, i've had grey hair since my 20s.  i'm used to that.  but white hair? 

that's reserved for old folks!  to further make me feel like an old man, i had to rearrange some shit in our shed.  to do this arranging i had to get in to the shed.  as soon as i squeezed inside the shed door it was blocked by a fair number of area rugs.  i was trapped.  the shed was hot.  the rugs were heavy.  and for hte next 20 minutes i was lifting some serious weight so i could get out of the shed.  anna worried that i would have heat stroke -- it was very hot -- and/or a heart attack.  i poo-pooed her.  i've done a very many rearrangements in our shed before, to no ill effect.

today was different.  i was pooped.  i got out of the shed but had to take several minutes to sit down and catch my breath, my bearings.  i wrenched my shoulders and lower back.  the face that looks back at me in the mirror thinks he is 25.  my body is telling me i'm 50. 

and that's what frightened me.  i'm at the age to have a heart attack.  many of my lodestar poets died at earlier ages.  dylan thomas died at 39.  i used to think of 39 as an advanced age.  i must've been high to think that! 

well, i survived.  i did take a long, luxurious nap.  images and thoughts were inchoate.  i even had a couple of sexy images dance thru my hypnogogic state.  my white hair is still my hair even if it is thinning.  and if it is true that you are only as old as you feel then i am 25.  but not really.  i am an older u.s.american man.

i'll take something my father told me as gospel.  to grow old is a privilege.  back pain and white hair is lucky.  stop my bitching.  i'm alive, for the short time being.  i will do my best to enjoy the fuck out of it.