This came across my Facebook stream today. It’s from Bob Dylan about being age 80, and it gave me a few things about my own age 73 to ponder…

Some of this applies to me at 73, some not. There Is a certain freedom in being old…the closer you get to the grave (I’ve told my brother I want to have my ashes scattered on a hillside near Oceano with a view of the ocean) you can see more clearly what matters and what does not. People have come and gone from your life and some of those you grieve and some you wish had gone sooner: You see better what matters in a person. But the fact is I was always hard to program. Not sure where that came from in my heritage, maybe more from dad’s side than moms, but it was always there. In retrospect I think it was the curiosity. I was a kid that couldn’t stay away from science and technology. Books were my friends from an early age, and reading will grow you inside. But if I am truthful, I bore easily. Being confined in a religion or ideology of any kind feels suffocating. My mind wants to explore. It’s one reason I’ve always had trouble with focus. But this has kept me from being trapped by pretty illusions for very long. On the other hand, I am an artist; I weave my own illusions. That is very much a two edged sword. Picasso said art is a lie that makes us see the truth. But us gay kids know it can also be a refuge from a world that hates us.

The fire Dylan mentions is still there in me, but the body isn’t telling me been there done that, but do you really think you can finish it at this stage. A Coming Out Story is finished but really not. Not in the way I wanted. I just ended it because I thought I was running out of time. I am seriously hoping that second retirement motivates me to flesh it out like I always wanted. I take some comfort in what Jacob Bronowski taught me; that no work is ever finished; you just take it as far as you can and then stop. What the artist leaves behind isn’t finished pieces so much as mile markers. This is where I am now…this is what I see. I will leave a bunch of those.

I know Very Unpleasantly what Dylan means by having that understanding of what you could have changed when it would have mattered. Things I did still haunt me. Even worse, things I didn’t do. Things I never said when I should have, (Hi Tico!) I have to live with all that now because it’s all water under the bridge…or Yesterday’s Snow, as the Germans say.

As for not being surprised by anything anymore, I hope I never reach the point where I am never surprised by anything. Even the unpleasant surprises keep you engaged.

Time. That business about time standing still and we’re the ones that move. I object. As Prior Walter said in Angels In America, “The world only spins forward.” Everything moves.