By Mathias Freese
Thoreau said it best, “to live deliberately,” probably the best use of an
adverb in the English language. Yet, how do we go about living
moment to moment? The answer is written on the wind. As my human
mechanism deliberately falls prey to aging, I see less clearly at night
at the wheel, my driving skills are diminishing and my musculature
creaks more than ever. Being overweight makes me wheeze as I
engage my shoelaces. I am experiencing a slow landslide.
However, that caged soul of mine, my elan vital, is a sprite within an
old body. I will myself to rage, rage against the dying of the light and
the discrepancy between what I am and what I will become is not a
little unsettling. It is inevitable. May I have the wind capacity to blow a
trumpet at four in the morning outside the old age home. If not, just
enough lust to reach for a nurse’s ass. I think of Zorba the Greek who
chooses to wrestle with death as he comes to his end. I am a
fortunate human being, for I have sustained a personal light up to 84. It
is a gift outright, to quote Frost.
So, here I am being express, lining up words to compel your interest
for a moment, a piquant gumdrop on your tongue. Beset by a palette
of old age diseases, the amount of pills I take in the morning is like the
beads of an abacus. Gratefully they keep my body working while my
spirit goes about creating, writing and in some unintended way living
moment to moment — really, is there any other way? Time makes us
do that, we just have to learn how to suck out the marrow of each and
every worthwhile moment. I find it hard to live deliberately. I would
recast Thoreau’s words into an Eastern equation. To live inwardly and
in no way deliberately. Equally as arduous.
I have no advice to share at 84 except a few threadbare essentials
and one or two observations, not worth sharing. I will put that aside for
a more casual commentary. I am a little less snarky but I maintain a
razor’s edge; I still have a dour opinion of mankind even with all its
wonders. One Parthenon does not a human being make. I still carry
an infantile pustule of resentments, that bog of swampy acids we tend
to tote till the end. I am a little bit wiser about most things, having lived
through most things. I think of Mark Twain in his later years who had a
real grasp of his fellow human beings. Twain ate ravenously of
personal adversity. And so have I. Humorously, I tell people I like, or
care for: I wish you adversity in life. I think it is an elixir for a life well
lived. Check me out on this assumption.
In my time I have lost my mother at 20 to ovarian cancer; a cousin in a
car crash at 21; my wife of 29 years in a horrific car crash; a 34 year-
old daughter by suicide; a wife died from ALS after only married for
two years. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I have metabolized this bile. I
go on. The mind and the soul, the spark of life, persevere. I cannot will
this. It is simply there, it is a “gift.” And what have I learned? I will
cheat. Wait until you are 84 to answer that.
Happy birthday, Matt.
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