40

I am hovering near 40. The emotional portion of my brain wants my higher brain to be concerned about this. The higher brain is currently looking at the matter with bemusement and mild indifference. The totallity of me is in the middle. I still cling like most people to the illusion that I have at least half my life left. This is an illusion since there are now, and always have been, thousands of chances to get killed off. The longer you live on earth the greater the risk of you doing something stupid, running into someone stupid, or coming down with something stupid, and dying from it.

I go with Donna to estate sales. It is like you are part of the decay of the person that is dead, or in a nursing home. You are the scavenger picking through this persons life. The ski boots that were in style in 1972, the Johnny Cash albums whose jackets are weather beaten but whose disks are pristine, the furniture, jewelry, clothing, ect. The most poignent and saddest things are boxes of old photos. They are sold by the box. The photo's that seem to be worth selling are black and white. I have a BW photo of a man, probably from the 40's, that has been colorized. He is smiling and looking at the top of his game. He looks, in the photo, to be about my age now.

At some point all the stuff we have will go this way. Some will be passed down. Maybe. But most, after a generation, will lose meaning and my picture will be in a box for sale at some estate sale. The stuff we have now becomes an after image of us; the last things above ground that say we were here. One by one the artifacts lose context. When that context is gone the item is just another disconnected curiosity.

I have listened to people talk about midlife crisis. And told myself and others that this is not goning to be me. But I think there is some internal, animal response in all of us. It is the response that wills us into a vainglorious attempt to leave a mark, something solid, something that will last. It is a vainglory since we seek the impossible. We look out on the pyramids and think "well at least that guy left a mark...whoever he was" Even the pyramids were built at the command of shadows almost totally forgotten. In time the buildings themselves will disapear. My kids and any they have will be the things that say I was here. Everything else will go. In a thousand years there will be some dude writing stuff like this; he will not know me, or even have my name, but his existance will not have been possible without me.

So what is the point of all that? I have no idea. Just some thoughts.